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- Topic: Italian >
- "Lui è un uomo in gamba."
110 Comments
It's probably a sign of the historical importance of walking, running, and horse riding in Italy/Rome. A man who can walk well, a man "in legs" is a capable man.
1616
I said "He is an on the ball man" just to see what happened, and it was accepted. But if I were being serious, I just say, "He is a capable man", as "capable" is the first suggested translation for "in gamba"
I've always understood "in gamba" to correspond to our English expression, "with it," which can have many applications. WordReference also translates it as "on the ball" or "on top of things," and gives "In gamba!" as a way of saying "Take care!" "Capable" seems a rather boring way to translate it.
I also vote for WordReference to help get at the nuances of these expressions.
Wordreference.com also specifically lists the compound form "essere in gamba" as meaning "be very capable".
1368
Good way to remember the phrase. It's closer to the Italian than what I contrived: a man (who in tough situations) always lands on his feet.
Maybe this idiom has something to do with the Hebrew connection between the word רגיל <rageel> (=used to something/capable of something), derived from the root ר.ג.ל (RGL), and the word רגל <Regel> (=leg) of the same root. So far i've encountered many similar phenomenons, where the Italian association of words was identical to the Hebrew equivalent...
170
If the anti idioms are not pulling our leg i think they should toe the line. Some of us want to learn italian as spoken, idioms and all.
1467
Take the idioms out of the medical section.. You're just confusing learners. None of the idioms would be used in the medical world so put them in there own section... Out of harms way!
262
And i agree with you; it looks like no one is interested on doing comments in this page. I think it's a sad situation for us, languages learners, not expressing our feelings. Maybe, we are afraid of making mistakes, not knowing that it is another way of learning. Greeetings!
712
Phrases like this require the literal translation as well. Especially when other Italian phrases translate to the same meaning such as "È un uomo capace". This would allow the student to understand the euphemism.
If "He is a capable man" is what they wanted as an answer, they should have put "È un uomo capace." There are several different ways to translate this idiom, and then you get marked wrong if you use one of the other translations. That's way too rigid a method for teaching a language; I've noticed this a lot about DuoLingo. It's not a good way to learn idioms.
1790
Why test us on idioms when we are learning the language? I am still in literal translation mode.
1468
A French friend of mine used to say, "He is in his legs." Maybe this is where that came from.
Words for body parts can be both remarkably stable, as can be seen in the words for 'nose' and 'heart', for example, and changeable. Slangish metaphors become, for example, the "regular" terms. Classical Latin crus (crura) 'leg' was replaced in Late Latin by gamba, borrowed from Greek kampe 'curvature'...In Japanese, gambaru means 'hang in there, do one's best'. But I remember gamba from the French form jambe, cf. il a des jambes.
991
Gambia is an African country.
in gamba is an expression meaning 'to be on top of', 'to be very capable'.
991
This is definitely not what the Italian sentence means.
From https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=leg+man&=true:
leg man
A male whose primary sexual interest centers on women's legs, sometimes in distinction to one who is interested in tits or asses.
He's a leg man; he prefers legs to tits.
Enough of the idioms. I am trying to learn to speak the language. Before I learn the idioms I just want to be able to understand the words I am speaking. At the end of the course, there should be a whole section on idioms, but not while we are still trying to learn the definitions of words and sentence structures.
If you are really trying to have conversations with people who actually speak the language, idioms are a vital part of the language. REALLY listen to your conversations some time - idioms such as these make up a pretty large portion of your speech. Some of them have become so fossilized you don't even realize that they started AS idioms (metaphors, largely).
991
It's a way to learn expressions. A language is not only made of grammar and "official" sentences: colloquial forms are as important as verb conjugation :-)
It finally dawned on me that phrases that make no sense when translated are probably idioms, so I've started looking them up. My favorite source is WordReference (http://www.wordreference.com/). The forums at WR are good for discussions.