Photo: Greeka.com
In every language people use some expression to indicate they think certain words are impossible to understand. Many say, “It’s all Greek to me.”
In the early 2000s, I worked at a magazine that was going through a redesign. Having not been involved in anything like that before, I was startled when the designer used the word “Greek” to refer to dummy text that helped illustrate the layout.
“That’s not Greek,” I found myself blurting out. “That’s Latin”! Turns out that in the design field any incomprehensible dummy text is called “Greek” because everyone is supposed to know that means you’re not expected to understand it.
(Except that I read Greek. Or used to to.)
Today’s post is on the notion that every language has some expression for the impenetrable, and many use “Greek.” A runner up is “Chinese.”
Dan Nosowitz wrote about this phenomenon at Atlas Obscura.
“It’s a curious thing when there is an idiom — structured roughly the same way and meaning essentially the same thing — that exists in a large number of languages. It’s even more curious when that idiom, having emerged in dozens of different languages, is actually … about language. That’s the case with ‘It’s Greek to me.’ …
“These 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’s not just, ‘Sorry, I can’t understand you.’ It’s saying, ‘The way you’re speaking right now is incomprehensible.’ And it specifically compares that incomprehensibility to a particular language, a language agreed upon in that culture to be particularly impenetrable.
“Sometimes that original cultural peg has been lost. In English, the phrase doesn’t really indicate anything about the way modern English-speakers feel about the Greek language or Greece in general. … So where did the phrase come from, and why is its sentiment so universal?
“One theory ties it to medieval monks. In Western Europe at this time, 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.’ …
“Shakespeare’s version is a lot more literal than most of the uses of this idiom. In Julius Caesar, the Roman character Casca describes a speech made by Cicero, a scholar of Greek. Casca, one of the conspirators who assassinates Caesar, does not speak Greek. So he says, ‘Those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me.’ …
“English is not the only language to rely on Greek as a shorthand for gobbledygook. Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Afrikaans do as well. You’ll notice those are all European languages except for Afrikaans, and Afrikaans is Germanic in origin.
“Harry Foundalis, a cognitive scientist who studies Greek linguistics, says many Greek people know that in English and other languages, Greek serves as an indecipherable tongue, and many Greek people, especially young ones, speak English anyway, so they’ve encountered it before. ‘How do we feel about it? We find it funny,’ says Foundalis. …
“There are, however, an awful lot of other languages that have some version of this phrase that doesn’t use Greek. Some of these are weird in their own right. What’s up with the Baltic countries, which think Spanish is so impenetrable? Why do the Danish use Volapük, a short-lived Esperanto-type constructed language created by a German in 1880? When a Bulgarian says ‘Все едно ми говориш на патагонски,’ which uses ‘Patagonian’ instead of Greek ,,, do they mean some extinct indigenous Chonan language, or Spanish, which is the dominant language there, or Patagonian Welsh, which also apparently exists?
“And what, you might ask, do the Greeks say?
“ ‘Εμένα, αυτά μου φαίνονται Κινέζικα.’ … ‘To me, this appears like Chinese.’ Chinese happens to be the most common replacement for Greek in the idiom around the world — and the language that tops polls as the most difficult natural language to learn. …
“In Chinese, for what it’s worth, there are a couple of different sayings in the ‘It’s Greek to me’ family. A Mandarin speaker might describe incomprehensible speech as Martian, or being like the sound of birds. The way you can tell you’ve reached the peak of language difficulty is when you don’t even bother with a human language in your version of the phrase.”
It’s a long article with lots more curious factoids. Check it out here.
Good post. I chuckled at the That is not Greek it is Latin.
My know-it-all side got away from me.
Oh how amusing ! Ive used that phrase before, interesting how it came about.
I learned a few things. Who knew there was a Patagonia Welsh spoken in Argentina?!
I’ve always loved these explanations of word and phrase origins! This is so interesting.
That’s your English-professor side showing!
I was thinking of Shakespeare when I saw your title. Of course, it doesn’t take me much to get me thinking about Shakespeare. 😉
That much I know from your books about Maya!
I know. I’m a fool for Shakespeare.
Interesting
I’m so delighted that you check in here, Patti. It’s another nice connection in addition to Facebook and Instagram. Who says only youngsters use social media?