# to carry coal to Newcastle



## vandad

I'm really eager to know how can it be said in Korean "to carry coal to Newcastle"? We in Persian say "to carry caraway to Kerman " and Kerman is a historical city in the south of Iran,in wich the most part of caraway seeds of Iran grow.


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## 조금만

I will leave the native speakers to furnish Korean equivalents. But although the expression in often cited as posted in the form posted above in lists of sayings intended for learners of English, in actual usage the form is plural. We say "carry coals to Newcastle".

The Oxford English Dictionary says of this sense (5b) of  coal (noun) that is is "used as collective singular, and in the plural; the latter now less usual, and said only of coal in pieces for burning."

However, it is the older, plural usage that is frozen in the proverb (first attested in 1606, and spelled 'coales', in a context that suggests the writer wasn't coining the expression, but merely citing a phrase in prior use.)


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## Mack&Mack

I can't come up with any Korean equivalent for the phrase although I can push myself to make up one for it. And if I did, native speakers of Korean would surely understand what I was trying to say.

I would just say 쓸데/필요 없는 일을 하다. I hope some others give their ideas on this.

Hope this helps.


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## 조금만

It is interesting that at least one, obviously very lexically aware, native speaker tells us that there is no straightforward Korean parallel.  Which suggests to me that, even if someone else does eventually dig up a Korean homologue, it is unlikely to be as well known to Koreans as the English equivalent is to English speakers (or, presumably, the Iranian one is to Iranians).

I had myself half wondered whether this might not prove to be a case where the original Western (Ancient Greek) expression of this type had somehow found its way into Korean, as it did into German, for instance. The German equivalent, "Eulen nach Athen tragen" = "To carry owls to Athens" is not German in origin at all but is a translation of  "γλαῦκας εἰς Ἀθῆνας κομίζειν", with the ancient proverbial use itself being plausibly traceable to a line in Aristophanes' comedy _The Birds_. (Germans also say "Carry beer to Munich", though)

What made me wonder about whether this Greek saying might just possibly have migrated into Korean also was my surprise, in watching a TV drama last week (a morning soap opera aimed at bored housewives, nothing with any high literary pretensions) , to hear a mother prefacing her statement of the "house rules" for a family guest by saying "로마에 가면 로마법을 따르고"  Or as we put it in English "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". The fascinating points (to me at any rate) being that the reference to Rome has apparently made itself at home in this culture so far from the ancient Mediterranean; and that the Korean phrase used is actually closer to the original formulation (Latin this time) than the English version. Writing in the 4th century CE, St. Augustine reports that his mentor St.Ambrose once advised him:  "Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more" = "If you are in Rome, live according to the Roman customs", where the second half at least could pass for quite a good translation of the Korean.

It would be fascinating to find out how this migration from medieval Latin to modern Korean took place. (Assuming the moderators don't judge that I have carried this particular issue somewhere too remote from the thread's starting point)


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## falconskid007

쓸데/필요 없는 일을 하다
correct, but not pinpoint, but it would convey the correct message


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## 조금만

falconskid007 said:


> [...] but it would convey the correct message



But part of the message, in the English expression at least, is that the labour performed is not only unnecessary but also arduous. I'm not sure that 일 is necessarily _hard_ labour  -- although admittedly Korean culture tends to think that if work is worth doing at all, then it's worth putting maximum effort into it. I would imagine the same connotation of a task that is as taxing as it is futile applies to the Iranian counterpart. A handful of caraway seeds is featherlight, but in the quantities that they are transported in the spice trade, they would be heavy and bulky burdens.

But then the original poster wasn't asking for a translation, and Mack&Mack wasn't trying to offer one. The real question was, and still is: some languages express the idea PERFORM AN ARDUOUS YET FUTILE TASK via an expression of the form 'convey X to Y', where X is some sort of commodity of general value in the culture concerned, and Y is a place where despite that general value, there is no demand or use for that product because it is already present in abundance at that location. The questioner was wondering whether Korean has an expression of that form. Mack&Mack's reply was his way of saying that to the best of his knowledge as a native speaker, there was no corresponding expression in Korean, so that the best that could be done with the underlying sense would be a paraphrase of some kind.

The reason I, and maybe other readers, are interested in such expressions is that they tend to encapsulate a snapshot of the material culture in which they arose and are embedded. It would be fascinating if there were indeed a Korean expression that said as much about Korean culture and history as the "coals to Newcastle" does about the economic and social history of Britain...


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## Anais Ninn

falconskid007 said:


> 쓸데/필요 없는 일을 하다
> correct, but not pinpoint, but it would convey the correct message



What about 태백시로 석탄 나르기? 태백시 is one of the major (probably the biggest) coal mines in Korea. 
Just a thought.  

Anais


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