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"The suggestion that the Spanish-American word gringo comes from the expression “hablar en griego”" False. We say "está en chino" (it's in chinese).
by armandososa 17y ago
"The suggestion that the Spanish-American word gringo comes from the expression “hablar en griego”"
False. We say "está en chino" (it's in chinese).
- faragon 17y agoAlso is the case for the spanish spoken in Spain, I'm used to ear: "está en chino" or "suena a chino" ("sounds like chinese").
- telemachos 17y agoThe author of the post draws a lot of his examples from a page at Omniglot. The table there (link below) shows variation for a number of languages. Spanish in particular offers both Greek and Chinese as "incomprehensible" languages. Portuguese also offers Greek and Chinese. Slovenian has "Spanish village" and Chinese. (That odd phrase - "Spanish village" - shows up in Macedonian, too.) Greek has Chinese and Arabic. In the comments to the Language Log post, a few German speakers describe variation in German as regional, and that may be true for the differences above. Anyhow, the Omniglot table is here: http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/incomprehensible.php http://www.omniglot.com/language/idioms/incomprehensible.php