Trafiło się ślepej kurze ziarno!

English Phonemes: “trah-FEE-woh shyeh SHLEH-pehy KOO-[rz]eh [Ź]AHR-noh”

Literal Translation: It hit itself [to] blind hen seed!

Elegant Translation: A blind hen hit upon a seed!

English Equivalent: Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

This saying is similar to the squirrel idiom in English, or like another popular saying, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

You can say this when you want to say someone got unexpectedly brilliant or lucky in some way. 

This phrase is also a great example of the power of the “object form”. In the translation, the direction of the seed going TO the hen is expressed only by the fact that the blind hen is in object form. There is no actual preposition here! That’s why I have “TO” in parenthesis in the title and literal translation: because it’s not a separate word as we’ve come to expect, but the meaning is still there. Feel the power!!

Trafiło = it hit, it landed [3rd person sing., past tense verb]
Się = itself, self [reflective helper word]
Ślepej = blind [adj. sing. object form]
Kurze = hen, chicken [sing. object form]
Ziarno = seed [subject form]

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