i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

It is interesting how different cultures classify incomprehensible concepts. In almost every language there is an expression that is used when a concept is not well understood. For example, English speakers say: "This is Greek to me". While in Spanish, when something is not understood, they say "esto me suena a chino" (this sounds Chinese to me). Furthermore, Germans tend to say that it sounds Spanish to them; "Das kommt mir Spanisch vor".

In http://bigthink.com/ideas/21415 we can see a graph illustrating how languages relate the incomprehensible. Most languages tend to believe that the incomprehensible is Chinese. However, to a Chinese man, something unintelligible is assumed as the language of heaven, or the "heavenly script".

There are some expressions that are comical. For example, for the Swedish, a chaotic situation is like the Polish Parliament ("Polsk Riksdag"), while for the Polish a chaotic situation is like being in a "Czech movie" (in other words, not being able to understand or follow anything). As another example, for a Spainard to play dumb or to wash their hands of something it is: "hacerse el sueco" (act Swedish). 

My favorite? When a French person thinks someone speaks french poorly, they say that he or she talks "like a Spanish cow" ("Parler français comme une vache espagnole").

Do you know of any particularly funny expressions in your language?