“Even if you give an ape a ring, it’ll remain an ugly thing.” -Netherlands.
A golden ring specifically
You can put your boots in the oven, but that don’t make 'em biscuits
You can’t paint the Mona Lisa with crayons.
Kind of related to yours, “You’re putting lipstick on a pig”
“You can’t get blood from a stone” is classic in the US. “No more juice from a squeeze” is another variant.
How is that even similar?
How is it not? The euphemisms all mean you “cant get X from Y.”
Both of my examples mean exactly that.
“You can’t make a silk purse from sows ear” means you can’t make something nice from rubbish. “You can’t get blood from a stone” means attempting something difficult, if not impossible and futile”. E.g. “trying to get my kids to tell me about their school day is like trying to get blood from a stone.” It doesn’t matter how hard I try I get nothing.
A sow is a female pig, which doesnt produce silk at all. Attempting to get silk from it would be difficult, if not impossible and futile. It wouldn’t matter how hard you try, you would get nothing.
You can get as much silk from a sows ear as you can get blood from a stone. I dont see much differnce, but i guess the sows ear phrase requires more culture context if it means “you can’t get something nice from rubbish.”
Polish - „you can’t make a whip out of shit” „z gówna bicza nie ukręcisz”
I imagine it wouldn’t hurt as much as a whip, but probably equally intimidating.
I like this one
I can sure as hell try
I think this takes home the prize for weirdest.
Probably the closest in Irish is “is deacair olann a bhaint de ghabhar” (it’s hard to get wool from a goat)
Depends where you live I guess. Mohair and cashmere come from goats.
巧妇难为无米之炊 – “even the best house wife cannot cook without rice”.
The proverb you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear means you can’t create a fine product from inferior materials.
I’d argue it’s closer to 朽木不可雕^. 巧婦難為無米之炊 (巧妇难为无米之炊) is more like you can’t make stuff without the necessary requirements.
^朽木不可雕: Lit. Rotten wood can’t be carved, metaphorically You can’t teach a student that is too dumb.
… Well actually no. Upon looking into these 3 idioms further while composing this comment, I leaned more and more towards that 巧婦難為無米之炊 is actually closer. Why? Because 朽木不可雕 applies only to humans and it puts more of a focus on the rotten wood (aka the dumb student).
I guess this comment was kind of useless lol but I decided to post it anyway because I put in way too much effort
You can’t polish a turd.
I dunno, man… Look up coprolite. You can absolutely polish them.
Having looked at some of the reports I have to clean up, I can tell you that yes, in fact, you CAN polish a turd
You CAN polish a turd but it’s still shit
You can’t polish a turd; you can roll it in glitter.
In Danish we have “you can’t cut the hair off a bald guy”
In the US there’s the saying “you can’t squeeze water from a stone”
I always heard it as blood from a stone, but yeah.
You can’t pick a naked man’s pocket.
That’s nature’s pocket.
“Make sure he doesn’t pick your pocket!”
The prison wallet
Challenge accepted.
Lipstick on a pig along with others already mentioned.
cuir síoda ar ghabhar; is gabhar fós é
You can hope in one hand and shit in the other, see which one fills up first.
Dare I ask which country speaks words that cannot be truer.
Edot: saw your instance…
That’s right. It’s from New Zealand.
In sweden there is the same but with spit in one hand, wish in the other.
Sorry, sir, I like shit.
Oh my god, I did not expect to be hit with the wisdom stick THAT hard
That is actually pretty funny.
it should just be deleted
You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit
You can make cattle feed out of it though.
