Monday, June 04, 2007

Kill Two Birds With One Stone

Monday, June fourth, two thousand and seven

Finding interesting English proverbs is really interesting to me actually. I can learn not only English but also effective life styles through it. As everyone knows, there's a famous common saying, "kill two birds with one stone", in English. I had thought it derives from the Japanese one, 一石二鳥(isseki nicyou), for ages, so I asked an English teacher the other day if it derives from the Japanese proverb or not. He replied to me that he wasn't so sure because there are tons of common sayings among many languages.
After that, I tried to figure out the exact origin on the Internet. Against my guess, I realized in the end that the English one is probably original and it was translated into the Japanese one in Edo era or Meiji era. Besides the Japanese one was started using commonly in the country in after World War 2! Amazing! I guessed the English proverb derived from Chinese or Japanese language because of the ring.

By the way, the recent busy job is really killing me. I'm so tired I could sleep for a month...zzz

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