January 16, 2009

It's [?] to me.

Graphing the world's metaphors of incomprehensibility:

Posted by Ann Althouse at 11:36 AM
Tags: , ,

8 comments:

Jeff with one 'f' said...

English should have an arrow pointing to Chinese as well; the phrase "Chinese algebra" comes to mind.

Also, the Greek arrow should really be pointing to the word "Barbarian" as the Greeks considered all non-Greek speakers to be barbarians, i.e. people whose language sounded like "bar-bar" to Greek ears.

1/16/09, 11:45 AM
Balfegor said...

My favourite is "Moonspeak." It's usually used by internet-addled Americans vis-a-vis East Asian languages (esp. Japanese).

1/16/09, 11:55 AM
Palladian said...

The other interesting thing is that apparently those who speak Aramaic, Telegu, Japanese and Javanese find no other language incomprehensible.

1/16/09, 12:17 PM
bearbee said...

@ Palladian, also Hindi.

What do Chinese say? 'Heaven only knows'?

During high-level techie meetings does Bill Gates ever say 'Thats geek to me"?

1/16/09, 12:57 PM
David said...

"What do Chinese say? 'Heaven only knows'?"

Wow, that must mean that my Grandmother was Chinese.

1/16/09, 1:25 PM
rhhardin said...

A fire-drill graph is needed.

1/16/09, 4:29 PM
Michael Haz said...

Not wearing my reading glasses for a moment. I thought that was the drawing form high school health class explaining how one sperm eventually finds the egg.

1/16/09, 9:14 PM
John Thacker said...

The other interesting thing is that the graph is simple; there are no loops.

1/16/09, 9:31 PM

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