Elsewhere on the web I was reading through a list of silly (often just stupid) questions that asked “What do Greeks say when they don’t understand something?” In other words, they can’t say “It’s all Greek to me” because if they did, that would mean they understand it since they ARE Greek? That got me to thinking about all the different little sayings we have like that.
For example: “That’s like the pot calling the kettle black.” What difference does that make? Maybe it’s a silver pot and a black kettle? But even if they’re both black, would that make the pot wrong? It’s kind of a silly thing to say on the surface.
Take a look at some cliche’d statement you’ve seen or heard recently? Does the statement stand up to scrutiny? (There’s an example right there… Would just looking at something make it fall over?) If it doesn’t make sense, why do people say it?
#1 by stavroula on January 4th, 2009 - 11:42 pm
So! I’m Greek! and i just wanted to say that when we(Greeks!) don’t understand something we say “it’s Chinese to me” (in our language is “είναι κινέζικα”). I can only assume that you say “it’s Greek” because Greek are in fact a difficult language since it has all that grammar and stuff…For us though it’s easier since we learn it by the time we are getting out of the womb! So i guess the most difficult language for us is Chinese. See, we seem to manage a lot of other languages since we learn at least 2 in our school! Myself, i can speak very well English, Spanish and French but I’ve never tried Chinese, so it’s hard to say! Adios!