
It’s All Greek to You and Me, So What Is It to the Greeks? - Vigier
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/its-all-greek-to-me
======
hnnmzh
This article missed the most interesting part.

In Chinese we say it's "book from heaven"("天书"), for incomprehensible
writings. That's the end of the this English...->Geek->Chinese->heaven
sequence

For speakings, yes it's "bird language" ("鸟语"), but the "bird" here is used as
a euphemism for male genital.

BTW Chinese is an _analytic language_ , so the grammar is actually very easy.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language)

~~~
Izkata
And to step sideways and combine the two, ever hear of the Language of the
Birds?

> In mythology, medieval literature and occultism, the language of the birds
> is postulated as a mystical, perfect divine language, green language, Adamic
> language, Enochian, angelic language or a mythical or magical language used
> by birds to communicate with the initiated.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_birds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_the_birds)

------
freetime2
This reminds me of a lighthearted paper my former CS professor wrote back in
1978, where he looks for equivalents of “it was Greek to me” and uses them to
created a directed graph between languages to determine which is the hardest:

[https://people.cs.umass.edu/~rsnbrg/hardest.pdf](https://people.cs.umass.edu/~rsnbrg/hardest.pdf)

Spoiler alert: it’s Chinese.

~~~
dotancohen
In Hebrew we also say "It's Chinese" when we don't understand something.

Interestingly enough, I took the family to Greece just last month and
explained to the children that in English, it is said that something sounds
Greek if it cannot be understood. My oldest was wise enough to ask why, if
Greek is the root of so many English words. I still don't have an answer for
her!

~~~
qwhelan
Just a guess, but the Catholic Church relied on a Latin translation of the
Bible. Accordingly, schools taught Latin as you needed it to understand the
Bible and the Mass.

Those schools also taught Ancient Greek for advanced students to be able to
read philosophy and portions of the Bible. This was useful if you wanted to be
a priest, but otherwise it was just a pointlessly hard course for most
students.

~~~
asveikau
I had read that during the Roman empire there was a lot of Latin-Greek
bilingualism, and that an educated person would be expected to know both, even
in the western part of the empire. At some point that ceased to be the case
and those places just got Vulgar Latin and the various Romance languages.

------
rufb
Funnily enough, the word "barbarian" for uncivilized people comes all the way
from Ancient Greek slang, proverbially meaning "people who speak in these 'bar
bar bar' noises".[0] It's all bar bar bar to me. :)

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarian)

~~~
StavrosK
"Barbarian" meant "foreigner", not "uncivilized".

Additional "fun" fact: in modern Greek, the onomatopoeia for "babbling" is
"burbur".

------
kyriakos
I can confirm as a native Greek speaker we use Chinese for the same
expression.

Based on the linked scale it is more accurate to say Japanese instead.

~~~
paganel
Am Romanian, we also use Chinese for the same expression. That is most of the
times, we also use Turkish, as in: “What it is so hard to understand? Am I
speaking Turkish to you?”

~~~
pibi
Italian here, we use Arab for pretty the same sentence.

That's because we are still studying Greek and Latin on some public school.

~~~
jaclaz
Yes and no (meaning that we strangely use both Arabic and Turkish in different
situations).

If you don't understand, you would say "Mi sembra arabo" (it seems arabic to
me) but if you are talking and the other part doesn't understand it is more
common "E che parlo, turco?" (what am I speaking, turkish?) than "E che parlo,
arabo?" (what am I speaking, arabic?) at least in my experience.

Of course historically "turk" and "arab" were synonyms due to the fall of of
Constantinople and the "contacts" with the Ottoman Empire.

And now, risking to quote myself, evidence of the sentence (by a greek) "it's
English to me":

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484479#20485258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20484479#20485258)

~~~
pmontra
I never heard this Turkish expression, only the Arabic one. I always lived in
the Milan area. Where is it used? "E che" sounds central Italy.

~~~
jaclaz
Sure, the "E che" form is tuscany and central Italy (as often happens
considered archaic by someone), the "parlo turco" is italian alright:

[http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ricerca/Parlare-
turco/](http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ricerca/Parlare-turco/)

A more "neutral" Italian would be "Parlo forse turco?".

Curiously, it is a sentence used in literature by Andrea Camilleri which
should mean that the form is also in use in Sicily.

JFYI ;-) Mario Vigorone [1980]:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yANFI1bs9c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yANFI1bs9c)

~~~
pibi
Also the "parlo arabo?" is listed on treccani:
[http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/arabo](http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/arabo)

BTW, I agree with the other comment that this is more common in the north.

------
yesenadam
The awesome Argentinian move _Un cuento chino_ is in English _Chinese Take-
Away_ or U.S. English _Chinese Take-Out_ [0] ...because _un cuento chino_
(literally, a Chinese story) means in Spanish _a tall tale, a cock-and-bull
story, a confusing mess_ [1], so the title (the movie features a Chinese guy
and his extremely unlikely, hard-to-believe history) is rather untranslatable.

Another expression relating to a confusing mess is the wonderful Hungarian
_Flood-resistant mirror-drilling machine_ :

"Before Unicode became common in e-mail clients, e-mails containing Hungarian
text often had the letters ő and ű corrupted, sometimes to the point of
unrecognizability. It is common to respond to an e-mail rendered unreadable
(see examples below) by character mangling (referred to as "betűszemét",
meaning "garbage lettering") with the phrase "Árvíztűrő tükörfúrógép", a
nonsense phrase (literally "Flood-resistant mirror-drilling machine")
containing all accented characters used in Hungarian."[2]

[0] Australia here. What in the U.S. is apparently called _take-out_ is called
_take-away_ here.

[1]
[https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=un%...](https://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=un%20cuento%20chino)

[https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/un-cuento-
chino.7730...](https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/un-cuento-chino.7730/)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake#Hungarian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojibake#Hungarian)

------
maneesh
Here's a directed graph showing all of the language's versions of the idiom.

[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/graph2.png](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/graph2.png)

from
[https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024](https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024)

~~~
ColinWright
Using neato instead of dot to layout the graph is nice. I'll do that later if
I get time, but I'm not in a position to do it just now.

 _Edit:_ Here:

[https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/DifficultyDiGraph.png](https://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/DifficultyDiGraph.png)

------
derekp7
I thought the expression derived from the use of Greek alphabet characters in
advanced math. With complex formulas looking like a bunch of Greek writing,
this idiom fits perfectly.

------
ricudis
Όλο το Ελληναριό του HN εδώ μαζεύτηκε :P

Greeks use Chinese as the canonical example of an incomprehensible language.

What's interesting is that although the "It's Greek to me" colloquialism
mostly refers to the fact that the Greek alphabet seems incomprehensible to
the (non-classical-humanities-educated) reader, Greek has actually a very
complex grammar: Everything is conjugated, everything has genders, and you
have to remember the correct form of every noun, preposition, article,
pronoun, etc. In comparison, Chinese grammars are amazingly simple.

Most Greeks don't take notice of this fact until they see somebody struggling
to learn Greek as a foreign language.

~~~
polytronic
Πράγματι όλοι εδώ!

Not to mention the fact that ancient Greek seems like a foreign language to
modern Greek speakers. Interestingly ancient Greek is more compact and
comprehensive (ie uses fewer words compared to modern) as it uses a richer
grammar (tenses, voices, etc)

------
sdoering
German here. We use Chinese, Spanish and train station.

As in: Am I talking Chinese to you?

And: That seems Spanish to me. Meaning"that doesn't seems to be right.

And if I am not able to grasp something I would say: I only understand train
station.

~~~
lucb1e
Dutch: we use Chinese and Spanish to me as well, but it doesn't mean that
something doesn't seem quite right. It typically means that you don't
understand something. Looking in a dictionary, it is mentioned for Chinese,
but not for Spanish, so maybe it's because I grew up close to the German
border that the local dialect uses Spanish and thereby the people might also
say Spanish in normal Dutch.

For the train station, we don't have something that means the same that I can
think of right now, but a similar one is "my name is Haas". You can say it
when you suspect someone just pretends not to know anything about it, but
about yourself it can be used either way. Seems to be a purely Dutch thing, I
looked up the Wikipedia and discovered that it does not have anything to do
with the animal "haas" (hare). Somewhat unsurprisingly, it comes from a story
about a German:

[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mijn_naam_is_haas](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mijn_naam_is_haas)

Paraphrased in English: The saying probably stems from an event in 1855, where
a German student wanted to flee to France. To cross the border, he needed an
identity card, which he got from a classmate, Victor von Hase. Von Hase then
claimed he lost his ID, but it was later found in France, where the murderer
had lost it. The real Von Hase had to appear in court and that is where he
spoke the words millions would come to speak after him: "Mein Name ist Hase
[...] ich weiß von nichts." (My name is "hare", I don't know anything about
this.)

~~~
Xylakant
The same saying exists in German as well.

~~~
lucb1e
Oh, odd that there is no mention of it on the Wikipedia page, nor a
translation.

~~~
Xylakant
I was never aware of the origin, but I know the use. And I was born and raised
quite far from the Dutch border, so it’s not local spillover.

I’d put that down to the notoriety requirements of the German Wikipedia which
are somewhat peculiar.

Edit: It’s mentioned on this Wikipedia page
[https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hase](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hase)
and TIL: The expression was coined in the city I was born in.

------
sersi
Side-note but I rather disagree with placing Mandarin and Cantonese on the
same level. Cantonese is definitely quite a bit harder than Mandarin...

As for Japanese being harder than Mandarin and Cantonese, I think it's true if
one considers complete mastery of the language but I would say that Japanese
is easier to master orally for day to day life than either Mandarin or
Cantonese.

~~~
pmontra
A Japanese friend told me, Chinese is as easy as English. But characters are
easy for him. For us Chinese is hard to speak because of the tones. The
grammar seems very simple, simpler than any European language. Japanese has no
tones so it's easier to speak. Reading and writing, both are a mnemonic
nightmare. I remember European kids don't like multiplication tables, lol.

------
necovek
While it's not an equivalent phrase, many a Slavic language calls Germans
"mutes" (нем/nem — mute, Germans: Немци/Nemci). "Slav/slov" comes from a
"word", and then you've got these _other_ folks nearby who can't really speak
:-)

------
michlsemn
In Lebanese Arabic, the expression is: "Am I speaking Karshuni [1]?" Chinese,
Turkish, and Kurdish are also used.

[1]:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garshuni](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garshuni)

~~~
bebe3000
Hungarian: It's "full chinese" for me

------
cesarb
Wikipedia article, with more examples:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me)

------
andrewshadura
In Slovak, they say ‘Spanish village’ („španielska dedina“) for something
beyond one's understanding.

~~~
dmichulke
In German: "Das sind für mich böhmische Dörfer" -> Bohemian (~Czech) villages.

But I only ever heard this one in Saxony, which borders the Czech Republic.

------
abbaselmas
Turkish here, we use French or Chinese

~~~
anticensor
Another Turkish expression is, "Anladıysam Arap olayım" ( "Make me Arab if I
understand"), again, Arabic to me, but expressed in reverse.

------
chris_st
The phrase "It's greek to me!" came up at work once, so we asked our co-
worker, who was of Greek descent, what Greek people said. She said they use
the phrase, "You're preaching a Turkish sermon"!

~~~
StavrosK
Greek here, I've never heard this ever.

------
inawarminister
Jakartan (Indonesian) here, we use Hongkong (Cantonese) amusingly.

------
edgarvaldes
In México we say "It's in chinese".

Interesting that so many comments here talk about spanish being used as
equivalent for "greek" in their culture.

------
dfawcus
Well growing up in England, that isn't what what we used.

We would say that something was "Double Dutch", not that it was "Greek to me".

~~~
ggm
Given how Dutch and Frisian and German relate to english, puzzling that double
Dutch means incomprehensible,since for any sailor on the north sea coast and
many Scots Dutch was a trading and neighbouring economy. Pantiles on roofs in
Scotland came over as ballast trading sea coal to the Netherlands.

~~~
dfawcus
I also found this: [https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/double-
dutch.html](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/double-dutch.html)

Which seems to suggest that "Double Dutch" (and "High Dutch") actually refer
to the German language.

------
avip
In French Hebrew is used (c’est de l'hébreu)

~~~
Majestic121
It might depend on the region, to me Chinese feels more natural. "c'est du
chinois"

------
BerislavLopac
In many Slavic languages, the word for Germans literally translates as "the
mutes".

------
D-Coder
Esperanto: It's Volapük to me (estas Volapukaĵo al mi).

