Linguistic maps are always fun to make. I made this one with the help of reddit and went hard on regional languages, paying tribute to Sami, Komi, Piedmontese, Breton, Friuli and other languages that rarely make it onto linguistic maps. These are only selected versions of this question and of course, there are many more ways in each and every language to ask for time.

I’ve always been interested in how proverbs and certain expressions translate to other languages and for the last few weeks, I was exploring what people in different European countries say when someone enters a room/house and leaves the door open. There are a lot of great options but my personal favourites are Portuguese, Italian and Turkish. Keep in mind, that these are only selected versions, more expressions conveying the same meaning exist in most of the countries!

While some of the expressions seem obvious, like the German or the Ukrainian one as they imply a place where doors close by themselves, others are much less straightforward and have interesting history behind them. The Portuguese one, for instance, might be going back centuries! As one of the theories claims, in the 16th century, an extra gate was built into the city walls of Braga, but because it was quite a peaceful period in the city’s history and because it already started sprawling outside the walls, they didn’t install a door to block the gateway. Thus, the notion that people from Braga do not close doors was born.

The Dutch expression comes from the fact that church doors often stay open for people to come in. The Czech one I assume comes from the idea that if you have a pole in your arse you need to leave the door open the pole gets into the room/house to. Many Slavic languages also have a version about having a tail, I assume, for the same reasons.

The main source for this map was the AskEurope subreddit, although for some languages I had to mobilise native speakers in their own subreddits and a few friends of mine.