I’m all ears

How do you say this idiom in other languages?

The expression, “I’m all ears” is used when you want to show somebody that you’re listening and ready for them to tell you something. Here’s how you say this idiom in French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese:

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French

“Je suis tout ouïe”

In French, the word “ouïe” means “hearing” or it can also mean “gill”. So, “tout ouïe” means “all hearing”.

A less idiomatic way of saying this would be, “J’écoute attentivement”, which literally means “I’m listening attentively”.

Spanish

“Soy todo oídos”

In Spanish, this phrase is translated word for word to mean “I am all ears”.

There are actually two words for “ear” in Spanish. You have “oído”, which means the “inner ear”, and then there’s “oreja”, which is the outer ear.

You can say: me duele el oído

And this means “I have earache” as in you have an ache in your inner ear.

However, if you say: me duele la oreja

This phrase means that your ear is hurting on the outside.

German

“Ich bin ganz Ohr”

“Ohr” means “ear” in German, and “ganz” means “entirely” or “totally”. So, “ich bin ganz Ohr” means “I am entirely ear”.

Italian

“Sono tutto orecchi”

The word “orecchi” means “ears” in Italian. The singular is “orecchio”.

Normally, in Italian, if a word ends in an “o”, to make it plural, you change the “o” to an “i”. However, because there is already a letter i before the o in “orecchio”, the plural is just “orecchi”.

In Italian, there is also an alternative form of the plural of “orecchio”; you can either say “orecchi” or “orecchie”. So, that mean you can either say, “sono tutto orecchi” or “sono tutto orecchie”.

Finally, the word “tutto” can be shortened to just “tutt” in front of the letter o, so you can say these too: