The Serbian proverb ‘ Do not mix frogs with grandmas’ is a funny way of saying: stop comparing things that have nothing to do with each other.
Get breaking news anytime, anywhere. Download the TOI app now!
Serbian proverb of the day
Do not mix frogs with grandmas
A frog lives in a pond and doesn't talk. A grandma lives in a house and never stops talking.
Putting them in the same sentence makes no sense, and that's the whole point. When someone compares two things that are completely different, or brings up an unrelated topic just to win an argument, this saying calls it out right away.
You don't need to explain why the comparison is silly. The picture of a frog sitting next to grandma at the dinner table already says it.
Ingrained in real life
People use this proverb when someone is trying to avoid the real point of a conversation by talking about something totally different. For example, if someone is asked why they broke a promise, and instead they start talking about a time someone else broke a promise, that's mixing frogs with grandmas.
If someone defends a mistake by bringing up an old, unrelated success, that's the same thing. In daily life, this proverb reminds people to stay on topic.
Before comparing two situations, it's worth asking: do these two things actually have anything in common? Or am I just grabbing something convenient to make my point sound better? It's a simple, funny way to keep conversations honest.
Similar proverbs across cultures
Many cultures have their own version of this idea, usually using everyday objects or animals to make the point. In English, people say "comparing apples to oranges" when two things are too different to compare fairly.
In Russian, there's a saying that translates to "there's an elderberry in the garden, and an uncle in Kyiv," used when someone's argument makes no logical sense at all. In German, people say "those are two pairs of shoes," meaning two things might look similar but are actually not related at all.
Each of these sayings uses something simple and familiar; fruit, shoes, a random uncle, or in Serbia's case, a frog and a grandma, to make the same point: don't force a connection between things that don't belong together. It's a small, light-hearted way of keeping our thinking clear and our arguments fair.
