It's All Greek to Me

 
In English we often use the phrase its 'Double Dutch' or 'It's all Greek to me' to indicate that something is incomprehensible or beyond one's ability to understand. The Romans also described things as being Greek - "Graecum est; non legitur" ("It is Greek, so it cannot be read") - presumably because the different alphabet exacerbated the difficulty of understanding it. Whilst referring to Greek was not especially derogatory the phrase Double Dutch was and this attack on the Dutch is more recent. It probably stems from the 17th century when the two countries were forever at each other's throats as they vied for supremacy at sea and to carve out Empires from foreign lands. .

But what do the Greeks and Dutch say? They say 'It's Chinese to me'. The Croatians and Czecks say it's Spanish. The Italians refer to it as Arabic, Aramaic or Ostrogoth. The Romanians call it Turkish and the Turks call it French. The Mandarin Chinese are one of the few peoples who don't refer to another language - they say it's like the Book from Heaven (referring to an unknown writing system); like the tongues of birds, or the language of Mars. But my favourite is the expression of the Cantonese Chinese who describe English as sounding like chicken intestines!