It's all Greek to me!

[shewhomust]

A question on this evening's Only Connect required contestants to recognise statements in a variety of languages which were the idiom equivalent to the English It's all Greek to me. Curiously, neither team could crack it. Or perhaps not so curiously: it's not uncommon for me to be able to answer only one question in the entire programme, but for it to be a question that foxes the contestants (who have no trouble with other questions which I find impenetrable).

Anyway, in addition to examples I recognised (French: Pour moi, c'est du chinois) was one I hadn't met before: Ĝi estas laŭ mi Volapukaĵo!, which is Esperanto for It's all Volapuk to me!

I am delighted by this, and relieved to have it confirmed by Omniglot alongside a fine collection of others.

Comments

[sovay]

Ĝi estas laŭ mi Volapukaĵo!, which is Esperanto for It's all Volapuk to me!

That's wonderful.

[shewhomust]

Isn't it?

Over on LJ, steepholm reports on the artificial language wars: "(True fact: my Esperantist grandfather refused to let his children eat Toblerone, because Mr Tobler had defected to Ido. Splitters!)"

[boybear]

..what I need to know is - what do the Greeks say?

[shewhomust]

According to Omniglot, either 'Arabic' or 'Chinese'; whereas the Chinese say either it's like ghost script or it's like chicken intestines.

Interesting that what I think of as a spoken idiom is actually universally about the script.