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Archive 1

Language request

Greetings, I'm about to start hitting up people who have babel-tagged themselves so that we can add other languages to the list. If you add another one, please adhere to the the following format, and enter your entry alphabetically by language. If your language uses a non-Latin alphabet, please make your contribution both in the native writing system, and in whatever the standard Latin transcription system is. (The Yiddish example is just a lorem ipsum, not real)

French: Ça m'est hébreu. (Hebrew, Hebrew alphabet)
German: Das kommt mir spanisch vor. (Spanish, Latin alphabet)
Yiddish: אידישאידישאידיש (Doss kummt mi shpanish fer). (Spanish, Latin alphabet)

If your language happens to have an article on the idiom, please feel free to link to it, both in the table (don't forget the colon before the lx. abbrev.!) and on the interwiki links! For reference, a few wikis have the expression listed on a wiktionary article, not wikipedia. Thanks samwaltz 04:13, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Portuguese

Here in Brazil people actually say "isto é grego para mim" (Greek to me) and not "Chinese". Doidimais Brasil 00:39, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Chinese Mandarin

i added the translation for chinese mandarin.

天书("Book from the Heaven") only refers to unrecognizable writing system, and 鸟语("Sounds of the Birds") only refers to unknown to unrecognizable phonology system, so i added both. But it seems 鸟语("Sounds of the Birds") has a pejorative connotation insinuating the target language inferior to the host language, so i wonder that should be noted or not. ChongLi 17:11, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Writing Systems in table

I removed this column. It seemed to me to be no more than a listing of the common writing system of the respective language, without any distinction whether it is the writing system or the language per se (in either aural or in legible written form) that form the basis of the expression: The mappings Greek -> Greek alphabet, Chinese -> Chinese characters, etc. are implicit, and does not have to be spelled out. Furthermore, it was often outright missleading: Do the Slovaks alude to Spanish as gibberish because it is written with the "Spanish alphabet"? Hardly. Alatius (talk) 08:24, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

German

The German idiom "Das kommt mir Spanisch vor" (It seems Spanish) has its origin in the "Spanish court ceremony" and not because of the Spanish alphabet or the Spanish language. The new Emperors Karl, he was king of Spain, became the German Emperor in 1591. The changes in the ceremony and the behavior at the court seemed very strange (SPANISH).

Another information: the Spanish alphapet has a latin origin, the German alphabet too. It think it will not seem strange for Germans, if they look through the Spanish alphabet. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.56.248.128 (talk) 16:10, August 25, 2007 (UTC)


And what about German "Das ist mir ein böhmisches Dorf" ("It's a Bohemian/Czech village for me")? It has more or less the same meaning as "Das kommt mir Spanisch vor". Shouldn't it be appended? [1]

Note that also Slovak "To je pre mňa španielska dedina" or Czech "To je pro mě španělská vesnice" speak about (spanish) village (both mean "It's a Spanish village for me"). These idioms were probably made as "mergence" of German "Das ist mir ein böhmisches Dorf" and "Das kommt mir Spanisch vor". --88.102.58.13 19:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


I would disagree that "das kommt mir Spanisch vor" is equivalent to "it's all Greek to me" at all. To me - a native speaker - it means that I think something seems suspect, not to be trusted or generally odd, whereas the latter simply means I don't know anything about the subject. I can't think of anything that is a direct equivalent, though. 78.52.195.24 (talk) 20:49, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

I also don't like equating "Greek to me" with "kommt mir spanisch vor" -- like the previous user said, "spanish" is more suspicious than incomprehensible.
For "incomprehensible", I'd say, "Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof" (I understand only 'railway station'), but that's not language-targeted. -- pne (talk) 10:59, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

Sinhalese

The target language in Sinhalese is Sinhalese? Seems like a mistake there, but I don't know any Sinhalese to fix it. Eaglesight (talk) 03:11, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Lithuanian

I've heard some people here say "paukščių kalba"(bird language)- instead of chineese language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.232.152.127 (talk) 00:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Turkish

Konuya Fransız kalmak. Target "Fransız" is not language, it means Frenchmen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.103.208.173 (talk) 18:12, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Italian

I am a native Italian speaker. The previous version of the idiom (Questo è arabo per me) sounded a bit unnatural to me, so I have taken the liberty of changing it. The two forms I have addedd (per me, questo è arabo, and questo per me è arabo) are im my opinion what one would expect hearing, the first one conveying slightly more emphasis. If you want to question someone else's understanding of your words, instead, you would most probably say ma che, parlo arabo? "hey, am I speaking Arabic?" (in Italian that's pretty direct, but not necessarily unpolite if said to a friend. Avoid using the idiom with people you do not know well) --83.189.209.25 23:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

I am a native Italian speaker too. I agree with the changes made by the previous poster. I'd also add that Italian can be very creative on the choice of the "undecipherable" language, with particularly obscure languages used for humoristic effect (e.g., the "aramaic" quoted in the present version of the article). The most common choices would IMHO be Arabic, Turkish [especially in "Parlo Turco?!", in the usage mentioned in the comment above] and Chinese. The mentioned "Ostrogoth" is possible but mainly (only?) referring to an unintelligible handwriting and/or written text (who's ever heard spoken Ostrogoth, BTW?) and it's used only jokingly (in my memories it is especially primary-school children who seem to like this "Ostrogoth" reference). —Preceding unsigned comment added by L0rents (talk • contribs) 10:31, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Basque

In Basque one says, "hori latina da niretzat" that is Latin to me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.31.241.153 (talk) 16:42, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Czech

Czech phrase "španělská vesnice" does not mean incomprehensible speech but subject which is unfamiliar to speaker. If I say "je to pro mne španělská vesnice" (literally: It is Spanish village for me), I mean "I am not acquainted with that theme". Also, Czech phrase does not "target" to language (and Croatian does not too), so that I think it is not very apt to mention it as translation of English phrase. --212.71.166.74 (talk) 17:20, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Requesting column for literal translation + Added Urdu

Hi, it would be informative to include a column for translation (the literal translation that is; since the idiomatic translation would be 'Greek to me' obviously) from non English languages between the pronunciation and target language column. Request the major contributors consider that. (I added Urdu to the list.) --lTopGunl (talk) 11:20, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Chinese(mandarin)

完全不懂(wan quan bu dong)can be used as a 'greek to me' phrase(see wikitionary 'greek to me' translations) I have also added in simplified chinese writing as it is also used commonly in China and Singapore,with a growing usage in Malaysia. [[User:L'Etoile D'Ours|]] (talk) 02:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

完全不懂 = Can not understand completely小梨花 (talk) 01:46, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Norwegian, Dutch, Danish, German, probably more Germanic languages (?)

Calling something (in the same order as above) "kaudervelsk", "koeterwaals", "kaudervælsk", "kauderwelch" means something incomprehensible. The origin isn't clear though it probably refers to a latin language (most probable theories -> retoroman). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.89.91.139 (talk) 13:35, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Simple as that, the page linked to as a reference with Cantonese's chicken intestines goes to a broken link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.252.147 (talk) 17:03, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

French

In French we say "C'est du chinois" (this is Chinese) and not "C'est de l'hébreux" (this is Hebrew). But I have no idea of the IPA. Martious 08:19, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

It all depends on the ecolect you belong to, on your age and cultural background. I'm used to saying and hearing at least both of them: "c'est du chinois" IPA: [se dy ʃinwa], "c'est de l'hébreu" IPA: [se də lebʁø]. Mind that one can "perdre son latin", but not "son grec", and some people say "c'est du grec" IPA [se dy gʁɛk] as well (pour moi c'est du grec mais chacun son truc hein, here).--R Camus 16:57, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I second that, “c'est de l'hébreu” IPA: [se də lebʁø] is the one I am used to. Frédéric Mahé (talk) 07:51, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Written and oral language

In some language, the idioms about unknown written language or unknown spoken language may be differ, which I think applies to the Chinese, Cantonese, Filipino (they all have to do with some kind of bird), Latin, and some others. I'm not sure whether the English idiom "Greek to me" refers to one of them or both of them. For example, in Indonesian, "tulisan cakar ayam" (chicken feet writing) refer to the first, while "bahasa planet" (other planet, i.e. alien, language), refer to the second. So I included both. Bennylin (talk) 19:02, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

PS: A nearly universal example for the first one would be doctor's handwriting scrawling. Bennylin (talk) 19:19, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Chinpunkanpun

Chinpunkanpun refers not to Chinese, but to Gibberish, according to Wiktionary, and Google Translate. Furthermore, it is unlikely that ちんぷんかんぷん would refer to Chinese, as if it were the case, Kanji would be used for Sino-Japanese vocabulary terms. I don't see any 中国 or related terms; the word ちんぷんかんぷん has no relation to Chinese. -- 李博杰  | —Talk contribs email guestbook complaints 07:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Jisho.org, a pretty reliable online Japanese dictionary, has the Kanji as 珍紛漢紛. Wiktionary says the word is an imitation of spoken Chinese [1]. The 漢 (kan) is China (or Han), but Wiktionary says the word is ateiji, i.e. characters used to represent sounds, not meaning. I think we should leave it as is. 198.6.202.232 (talk) 15:29, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%8F%8D%E7%B4%9B%E6%BC%A2%E7%B4%9B

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Spanish

The Spanish equivalent to 'Greek to me' is 'Me suena a chino' instead of 'Eso es chino/griego para mí'. Apart from that, as far as I am concerned -I am native Spanish and I have spoken Spanish for 30 years- there is no reference to the Greek language in the Spanish expression. Thus that must be corrected on the article for the sake of accuracy and fairness. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.250.138 (talk) 19:26, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Actually the Spanidh equivalent is "Esta en chino", literal meaning being "it's in chinese". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.139.217.230 (talk) 22:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In Don Quixote, they have the phrase "le entendiían tan bien como si hablara en griego." Is Greek ever said or is Don Quixote just dated? 198.6.202.232 (talk) 15:15, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

>I'm skeptical of the translation of "No entiendo ni jota" - I thought this refered to the letter "J" (jota - pronounced "hota") but is this in fact a referenece to "iota" and Matthew 5:18? Can anyone locate the source 'Biblismos'? I clicked the link but it didn't work. --Petrichori (talk) 04:43, 10 September 2020 (UTC)

References

Without questioning the usefulness of the article, and not wanting to litter the article with tags, I would like the following possibly disputed items to be referenced, in addition to the overall reference to the very definition of the term:

  • "The expression is almost exclusively used with reference to the speaker (generally "Greek to me"; rarely or never "Greek to him")"
  • that it is the dead metaphor. The "dead metaphor" article is of poor quality, by the way, so I have to explain my logic: in the dead-met expression foot of a hill the word "foot" is no longer a metaphor, but a technical term and it is easily separable out of the expresion: "You see a cone-shaped hill with a dead tree at its foot". On the other hand, the word "Greek" from the "Greek to me" is inseparable from the expression, and the expression itself is still comprehended as a metaphor; e.g., you cannot use it is a formal text. This text would define this case as dormant metaphor (btw I see this text as useful for improving quite a few articles about figures of speech).

Also I have to point out that translations into other languages must be eventually validated by really solid references: omniglot and forum.wordreference.com are no better than wikipedia and in fact even worse: they don't provide sources of their knowledge.

Finally I have very serious doubts about the Mediaeval Latin entry. As you may know, educated people, who knew Latin, knew Greek as well; the two "dead" languages being obligatory part of classical education. Threfore, while the translation itself is vaid, I doubt it was used metaphorically. `'mikka 19:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

As you may know, knowledge of Greek in western Europe during mediaeval times was indeed scarce; even if you were educated and knew Latin well, you may well have known no more Greek than "kyrie eleison". (I give no reference to that, but neither do you.) What seems bogus, though, is the entry in the table, "Ille graecus a me est.". That looks almost like a machine translation to me, and furthermore the only hit on Google for that phrase is on Wikipedia, so I changed it to "Graecum est; non legitur.". Alatius (talk) 07:43, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I second mikka in doubting whether “Greek to me” even qualifies as a dead metaphor, but anyway I’ve simplified the intro and removed the unnecessary, tangential comparison of a dormant to a dead metaphor. Mucketymuck (talk) 04:56, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

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