Semes wan faasboet.
“Stuck together like a fastboat to a whale.”
Describes two people, usually lovers, who are inseparable — drawing on the whaling-era image of a small boat fastened tight to a captured whale.
— Traditional Norf'k Wisdom, Norfolk Island
Source: Norfolk Online News, "The Fascination of the Norfolk Language" — documented Norf'k idiom
More Proverbs from Norfolk Island
The wind from the east is the wind from home.
The easterly trade wind is remembered as a nostalgic reference to Pitcairn Island, the ancestral homeland of Norfolk Island's Pitcairn-descended community.
He'll see so good, he'll see round a corner.
A humorous exaggeration remembered as one of the sayings of islander Charles Henry Evans (born 1886), still recalled today under the nickname "Dar thing fe Chat's" — part of Norfolk Island's tradition of cherishing individually name-tagged sayings.
Whatever you can do today, do it well tomorrow.
A line from islander Archie Bigg's Norf'k poem "Morla el do", encouraging care and quality over rushed effort.
He makes my heart flip over.
A figurative Norf'k expression for falling in love, borrowing the nautical word "kepsais" (capsize) to picture a heart overturned by affection.
That's a real fastboat story.
Norf'k for a comic, "whale-sized" exaggeration — used to gently tease someone for stretching the truth for a laugh, part of the island's dry, nautical humour.
Murdering the King's English.
A defiant nickname islanders gave their own Norf'k speech after 1915 school rules banned it from the classroom in favour of standard English; now recalled as a badge of the language's survival.