Studying foreign languages/ language barriers
Slangs, figures of speech and other sentences in different languages or cultures
Slangs, figures of speech and other expressions may cause missunderstandings in different occasions, especially in the communication between people of different cultures or distinct native languages.Please, share those kinds of terms from your native language (or even from another idiom), explaining which is the real meaning of them and how each might be interpreted in other language or culture.
Knowledge like this is good to be shared and may avoid mistakes in the communication.
The British expression "For donkey's years" is not very used in the literal meaning. That is commonly utilized to mean something like "long time" or "many years".
The former term of that is "For donkey's ears", originated as rhyming slang, in an allusion to the length of the animal's ears. That is because, in rhyming slang, the last word of a short phrase is rhymed with the word that gives the slang meaning.
The transition from "For donkey's ears" to "For donkey's years" was aided by the fact that the writting of "ears" and of "years" are very similar (the word "ears" is contained in "years") and that donkeys live relative long time.
Anyway, sometimes, those setences are shortened just to "For donkeys".
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