Es cierto también decimos "No entiendo ni jota", "Por que no me hablas en Cristiano"janecito said:Looks like we've got a Czech-(Slovak-)Slovenian pact going here.Isn't there also a Spanish expression "No entiendo ni jota." meaning (approximately) the same. To shift from nationalities to alphabet.
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Also in French Pour moi, c'est de l'hébreu (it's Hebrew to me), which admittedly is less frequently used.In French: C'est du chinois (it's Chinese) or C'est du charabia.
yeah, we say in Greece "it's all Chinese to me", since Chinese is the most difficult language in the world and Greek the second most difficult!
Haha. Yeah, it is too bad we can't use that line, as something "Greek to me" would be something I could understand perfectly well.What is It's Greek to me in other languages? I am especially interested in what the Greeks say!..
This isn't exactly what you wanted, but it should help.
http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/incomprehensible.htm
Isn't there also a Spanish expression "No entiendo ni jota." meaning (approximately) the same. To shift from nationalities to alphabet.![]()
I know this post is rather old but I didn't find anyone answering it before, so I hope this is no double post:German:
Ich verstehe nur Bahnhof. = It's [all] Greek to me.
Literally: "I understand only 'train-staion' "
NO idea where that came from, but I've seen it and heard it.![]()
In Hungarian we say: Ez nekem kínai. It means 'That sounds Chinese to me'
In Polish we say: Być na tureckim kazaniu = to be at a turkish sermon ( means do not understand anything )
but also there is the expresion : Nie udawaj Greka! = Don't play the Greek! ( means "don't pretend that you don't understand me!
So Turkish and Greek seem to be the most difficult languages for Polish people.
When you want to say, that you don't understand, and again the context is narrowed to plot / situation you could say
To jest czeski film = It's a Czech film.
Hello Jana,what’s the equivalent and the English translation of “it’s all Greek to me” in your mother tongue? This could evolve into a nice exercise in geography.
In France we don't say « chinoiserie » (which has another pejorative meaning, in its plural form) but « c'est du chinois » (it's chinese to me), as already said by Gève here. In this thread, I remember it's also used in Dutch, you can use the « search this thread » function to find it.We also use the term "chinoiserie" in French.
Does any other language use "chinese" in its substantive form to refer to something very complicated that one cannot comprehend?
What a lovely image!Here is the Japanese one;
[...]
t?jin-no negoto
where t?jin is an archaism for "Westerners" (the expression itself is somewhat dated) and negoto is sleep-talk (sleep-talk of a foreigner).
The idea is that the languages of Westerners are incomprehensible already and what they speak while asleep is all the more so.
My first post here is going to be kind of a nerdy one, but I find this discussion very interesting! As far as I know the phrase originated in English from the quill of William Shakespeare in Julius Caesar. The earliest instance I know of which survives in print is the First Folio of 1623, but the play was of course written several years earlier (you know, during Shakespeare's lifetime!)
yeah, we say in Greece "it's all Chinese to me", since Chinese is the most difficult language in the world and Greek the second most difficult!