In a wide-ranging number of languages, major and minor, from all
different branches of the language family tree, there is some
version of “It’s Greek to me.”
One theory ties it to
medieval monks. In Western Europe, the predominant written
language was Latin, but much of the writing that survived from
antiquity was in Greek. The theory holds that these monks, in
transcribing and copying their texts, were not necessarily able
to read Greek, and would write a phrase next to any Greek text
they found: “Graecum est; non legitur.” Translated: “It is
Greek; it cannot be read.”
This and other idioms
all seek to describe one person’s failure to understand what the
other is trying to say, but in a particular, dismissive way. It
is not just, “Sorry, I can’t understand you.” It is saying, “The
way you are speaking right now is incomprehensible.” It
specifically compares that incomprehensibility to a particular
language, a language agreed upon in that culture to be
particularly impenetrable.
To Spanish, Portuguese,
Swedish, Norwegian, and Dutch - Greek serves as an
indecipherable tongue and not understandable. Baltic countries
think Spanish is impenetrable. People from Greece, Philippines,
Poland, France, Albania, and in many other places, say some
variation of, “That’s Chinese to me.”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments