Y'all are missing the point.
<snip>Did you know that the expression "it was Greek to me" was first coined by Shakespeare? <edit> But what do the Greeks say, when they find something to be incomprehensible? Well, turns out they have expressions that indicate something is either "Arabic" or "Chinese." But what idioms do those cultures use as the pinnacle of confusing nonsense?<snip>
The map is not a map of language relationships. It is a map of what idiom is used by speakers of one language when referring to incomprehensible language.
|