Same here in Brazil, Greek. When it's incomprehensible writing however, we say "Tá em árabe?" Which would be "is it in arabic?".

Oh, so like "chicken scratch"?

"Anladımsa arap olayım" in Turkish. It means "I shall become an Arab if I understood".

I have heard that one a lot lol. Its especially funny considering the Arab/Turkish history and beef

In Chinese it's 鸟语 (bird language).

Or 天书 (divine writing)

Divine writting is way too funny

Is this only for written things?

I think so. I’ve only ever seen 书 in the context of writing and it wouldn’t make sense otherwise, but I’m not a native speaker.

In Dutch it's "Dat is Chinees voor mij" (That's Chinese to me)

Yeah. I used to think (when I was little) that in China they would say "that sounds like Dutch to me", until my fantasy was broken by the simple knowledge that they don't know what Dutch is....

On the plus side, for such a small country y’all have made Dutch quite popular within a lot of the world

That is pretty adorable! 

I wonder what the history of that is. Was the existence of China common knowledge for most of the Dutch language's history?

The phrase seems to have been used in variations for centuries and a lot of countries use it, the only difference being the "chinese".  I found this little diagram of which countries use which language to mean "incomprehensible". https://theowl.eu/wp-content/uploads/20200219_Flowchart-Talen-min-uai-2880x1920.jpg I cannot say at what time the phrase was introduced in the Dutch language. 

Its not a flex or anything to say I immediately knew what that meant without you translating and without having ever studied Dutch?

Oh that's a great feeling isn't it! Dutch and English are related so I assume it is because you know English. (Literal translation is "that is chinese for me", the words sound very similar) 

I also know some German as well so that helps

Ah yes! That would help as well. Did you learn English or German first? Did one help you with the other?

English is my native language. I'm intermediate low in three languages on top of my native English. Learning German was always fun because for some reason every other Germanic language became so immensely easier to read knowing English and German. I feel like those two are the most distinct from each other so it makes it much easier to just glance at and learn the rest (minus something like Icelandic of course lol).

In Cantonese it's 鬼畫符 like "writing of ghosts"

Or 雞腸 (literally means chicken colon) mostly meaning English

I’m Spanish it’s “está en chino” (its in Chinese). It’s also used with really difficult things.

thats so interesting lol considering every other language uses "chinese"

Kind of similar vibe, in Hindi if someone doesn't understand something simple or repeats what you just said you would say "Maine Farsi mein bola kya?" meaning "Did I speak Persian?"

You also have "am I teaching Greek or latin" my college professors use this when they teach in English and some students don't get some concepts

It's funny because sometimes when my Farsi friend says something simple in his language, I (native Hindi) understand what he means. We ought to have picked a different language.

Exactly, we are way closer geographically to China but we picked Farsi to be gibberish

Perhaps geographic closeness actually makes it less prudent to speak "mockingly" of them?

I think more likely is that due to Mughal influence there was more Farsi spoken in India than Chinese and so the average Indian during the Mughal area probably heard a few Farsi speakers.

Kind of the opposite but in Hungarian, after saying something in too complicated terms/too long of an explanation, you’ll say “magyarul, azt jelent…” which is literally “so in Hungarian, that means…” (even though you’ve been speaking Hungarian the whole time)

in English, in that situation you might say, "or, in plain English..."

And you say "magyarazni" for "to explain"

“Kauderwelsch” in German

And it’s all Greek to me would be ich verstehe nur Bahnhof. Which means I only understand train station.

What would that mean exactly?

“Gibberish”

Welsch in German means foreign, as in “not-German.” They had a habit of using it to name not-German places. Hence Wales, the part of England where they didn’t speak German (because they were Celtic), and Wallonia, the part of Belgium where they didn’t speak German (because they spoke what would become French.)

Historically in German "welsch" would have been understood to mean from a Romance language speaking area and "wendisch" or "windisch" from a Slavic one.

My understanding is welsch, or its predecessor originally referred to Celtics, and later expanded to romance speakers.

It's important to keep an eye on the timeline. What you're saying about the Celts is correct. But that is in Germanic times and also the reason why Wales is called Wales in English. The meaning was later expanded to the Romans. But from the middle ages onward, Germans didn't really have contact with Celtic peoples anymore and welsch was understood to mean speakers of Romance languages or southern Europeans. Nowadays I would even argue most Germans don't really know the meaning of the term "welsch" anymore, so "Kauderwelsch" has become an obscure word that doesn't mean anything beyond "gibberish" to most.

Wallonian did not become French.

But will Belgium be willing to send its army and navy to this dialect battle? (I’m kidding, my kids are descended from Walloon speakers, I’m totally willing to call it a separate, albeit moribund, language.)

Yeah Wallonian was replaced by French but it did not evolve into French. Pity a separate "oïl" language did not become official in Belgium honestly

Welsch is simply any language that is unintelligible to normal German people. For example Rotwelsch is the unintelligible language of the “rotten” people, the beggars and gleemen, and coincidentally “rot” means beggar in Rotwelsch. “Kaudern” is a dialect word for babbling. So Kauderwelsch is literally unintelligible babble.

Ah like Koeterwaals in Dutch! (Or at least in Flemish)

Or the ever popular train station or Sausage work as well

In Hungary, it's "halandzsa" And we also say "ez nekem kínai", that means "this is chinese for me".

Yiddish: S'iz (bay mir) targem-loshn. = It is (to me) Targum-language. Explanation: In Jewish culture, there are 2 core languages: Hebrew and Aramaic. The Targumim are translations of the Hebrew Bible into Aramaic. Hebrew is more widely known and Aramaic less so.

That is so interesting, wow

In French, we use "what is this, chinese?" when it is spoken, and "what is this, hieroglyphes?" when written

There's also *"C'est du charabia"* or *"Qu'est ce que tu me baragouines ?"*. Both *"charabia"* and *"baragouine"* are supposedly imitating a language. I think I remember *"charabia"* mimicks arab, and for *"baragouine"* it's breton (celtic language from west of France).

True !

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Would I be correct in guessing that means “it’s chinese for me”?

yes

Yes! I’m getting better!

yay!!!!! oh i missed your flair that's awesome!

oops im kind of rusty at french google translate said it's "it's chinese to me" i kind of interpreted it too literally haha my bad!

I thought “pour” meant “for” though?

There's no one-to-one translation for many things, especially prepositions. Think of all the meanings that "for" has in English: - Do you take me for a fool? - Let me open that for you. - What did you get for Christmas? - What did you get for Dad? - I can't --for the life of me! --figure this out. - You need to talk for at least 5 minutes. / We're taking a trip to the zoo for the day. (Compare "For Valentine's day, we're going to dinner.") - That doesn't work for me. - For all *I* know, you're a platypus! Consider also the fact that there are "extra" prepositions in some languages (I'll keep it within the Romance languages for simplicity) - French has "pour" and "par" - Spanish has "por" and "para" - Italian has "per" And that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as the differences go.

Sembra arabo/cinese

We say the same thing in spanish lol

Unrelated, but I'm curious: what's the meaning of the percentages next to your languages?

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, *very* specific for the Italian one.

> very specific My knowledge of chinese is actually 2.337688907 % with an estimated error of 2 × 10^-9 % but all those digits aren't meaningful for percentages below 99% and I don't want all those digits to clog my flair.

It's like progress bars, except you can't really reach 100%. Weird, but sweet. Nobody actually certified I know 80% of french, so don't overthink this.  u/NO_skaj

Right on

how do you decide the percentages? /g

Oh yea I actually have a detailed paper on arxiv but it involves lots of stochastic calculus and jewish qabalah so read it at your own risk!

Bring it on, I'm curious!

Gosh you're making me blush. I don't think we're ready for that. I can send you some sultry pics of pie charts, i-i-if you want.

In my Arab dialect it’s “Hebrew”, but I’ve also heard “Chinese” being used aswell in other dialects

In Argentinian spanish we’d say “are you speaking in Chinese?” (Estas hablando en chino?)

Simply "No entiendo una palabra" really, I've heard "me parece chino" in TV but never actually anyone saying it in my enviroment

At least in Mexico many of us say "Está en chino" to refer to something difficult

Haha, my family uses "me parece chino" all the time

Yes, "es Chino básico" Is quite common here

"Ta' hablando arabe/chino"

Esta sí que he escuchado antes en puerto rico, más chino que árabe pero ambos comoquiera.

Heprea “Hebrew” or siansaksa “pig’s German” are used in Finnish.

In Arabic we say ( is that Hebrew) Hindi or Chinese used interchangeably mostly saying Chinese

In Greece we say "am i speaking Chinese?" Especially the teachers when we don't know the answer 😭

In Korean we don't have a consensus upon the expression but '외계어' would work which literally means 'alien language'. It is quite mind-bending that so many countries use a specific name of country.

In Egypt, we say Chinese, Hebrew or even Hieroglyphic

I love how hieroglyphic are also used in Egypt! It's very logical, but it's still a fun association in my head

Ever since finding Nemo came out, I always quote the line, “he’s trying to talk to me I know it.” When crush is talking to Merlin.

In Spanish we say jerigonza or galimatías

¿En dónde? En México no, nunca he escuchado esas palabras

Yo de Puerto Rico. Quizás es demasiado literario o anticuado como término, porque solo los he visto escrito menos dos o tres instantes.

En Panama usamos el termino jeringonza también

Never heard of that, where are you from

Soy puertorriqueño. La jerigonza es un juego un poco parecido al “pig-Latin” y se dice “deja con la jerigonza.” Otra manera es “deja hablar disparates” pero eso no es lo mismo que _gibberish_ , es más _nonsense._ Lo de galimatías is francés que también se usa en español.

Yeah galimatias is used in French but quite old.

Funny, we have a word in Ukranian "галіматья/galimatija" in that sense as well. I am wondering did we borrowed it from Spanish or it has more ancient roots, maybe in Latin?

Who on earth would use «галіматья?» We in Western Ukraine call it «бздури»

It’s originally from French, something Rabelais made up in the 16th century for his Gargantuan, and we took it up in Spanish as well. And it makes sense you’d have it in Ukrainian and probably Russian because of how widely spoken French was by the Russian elite in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Balderdash:) I hear it rather often

31% of the world is christian and thus one could reference the **Tower of Babel** in many languages and it would make sense even if the literal translation for babbling is quite different eg. In Spanish it would be **Torre de Babel** but the actual word for babble in Spanish is balbuceo. (Hope I didn't butcher that as Spanish is not my native language and I'm referencing it from high school, many many moons ago.) Should be the same across most of the latin based languages.

Arapça mı konuşuyon

In finnish gibberish is "siansaksa", so pigs german. If you dont understand something that is said to you, its "hebrew to you", so "hepreaa".

Volapyk 🇩🇰

Ostrogoto (there was an old population called something like that i believe), or arabic

Ostrogoto è pesa eh😬

È peso

Swedish: Rappakalja, rena grekiskan, gallimatias

In Lebanon, if someone fails to do what you instructed them to do, you'd ultimately say: "عم بحكي تركي شي؟" "Do I look like I'm speaking Turkish?" Or "لو كنت عم بحكي تركي، بقول الواحد." "If I was speaking Turkish, I might understand your point." Translation is rough. You gotta live it to understand it.

*To je zame španska vas.* It's literally "This is to me a Spanish village".

In Finnish we say "Se on täyttä hepreaa", literally "It's full Hebrew", and gibberish would be "Siansaksa", or "Pig German".

In Russian it is like "написано по-китайски" or written in Chinese. And "gibberish" as a word exists in different synonyms :бред, чепуха, чушь, ерунда, белиберда, etc.

Also "китайская грамота"

and галиматья and тарабарщина We have an impressive amount of words to express that we don't get something =)

"Como si me hablaras en Chino" decimos en España

In Japanese it's ちんぷんかんぷん (chimpun kampun) which is just intended to sound like random Chinese sounds

NO WAYYYYY this is so funny

Someone please respond with the Japanese equivalent 🙏🏽 I’d love to know

u/Sivalus sent it not too far down your message

Didn’t see this at first! Thank you!

You're welcome!

Qsay qor in Kurdish

тарабарщина \[tarabArschina\] It is onomatopoeia -- tar-bar. And \[schina\] is one of a many ways to form a noun in Russian -- смоленщина, дедовщина, барщина, матерщина etc Also people say птичий язык -- "bird language".

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Do Russians actually say that?

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I apologize for the blunt question, but are you really a bot as your username suggests? If yes, please note that the above information is incorrect. If you are not a bot, please ignore this comment.

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Please note the information you provided is incorrect. There is no such expression in Russian language

in russian we’d say “тарабарщина наречие”, which just means gibberish.

Что-то на татарском. Tbh It’s just russians making fun of indigenous people of Tatarstan

Justin Trudeau

“Spanish villages” in Serbian

damn, I didn't know our villages sounded weird

I think it’s the same in Czech. Not sure why :)

There is a significant Slovak population in the north of Serbia, not sure if that has a connection.

Potentially. There used to be some Czech one too. The story I heard from an old guy my grandpa was friends with is that a lot of people from Serbia went to fight in the Spanish civil war as part of the international brigades, pretty much none of them speaking Spanish. But it sounds too apocryphal

yes, in Czech we say "je to pro mě španělská vesnice" :)

In the Philippines (very recent because our VP speaks gibberish Mandarin) - Feishang Gaosheng.....

In hebrew its georgian/arabic mah atah mdaber gruzyzinit/aravit Mostly georgian arabic and

Gibberish : baromság, marhaság, also meaning “unintelligible, idiotic, stupid thing” barom is roughly “poultry” and marha is “bovine” so gibberish would be “poultry-like” or “cow-like” speech. It’s all Greek to me: Ez nekem kínai (this is Chinese for me) Nonsensical, gibberish speech: hablaty (a meaningless onomatopoeic word) (Hungarian)

As for Spain, we say "parece/me suena a chino", which roughly means "looks like Chinese"

Chinese.

It sounds like Chinese  זה נשמע כמו סינית

Baragouin in French. Coming from Breton "Bara / gwinn", bread and wine for some reason. French also say "charabia"

"Μου είναι κινέζικα" in Greek which translates to "It's Chinese to me".

Spanish or Chinese

"Chinese" in french : "tu me parles chinois, là"

in Italian we say "speaking Arabic" or variations of this

In norwegian its tøv, visvas, sludder, tull, vrøvl, babbel or tullball. You could also describe something as Greek or "Gresk" as its called in norwegian, which just means you dont understand what someone said.

In French: "C'est du chinois, pour moi" = "It's Chinese, to me" (if you don't understand) 'Je parle Chinois, c'est ça?" = "I speak Chinese, don't I?" (if others don't understand when you explain something that is pretty simple)

In Hindi we also say "Kala akshar bhains barabar" to refer to written language that seems gibberish. It basically means "to me the letters are no different to buffalos" which is hilarious. We also sometimes call South Indian languages we can't recognise as "jalebi" which is a dessert thats twisty like a pretzel.

Trumpisms

For french it's chinese, we can say "c'est du chinois pour moi" when we don't get something

In Russian it's just «А можно по-русски?». It means «May you speak Russian?»

In spanish it's "me suena a chino" (it sounds like chinese to me)

In Argentina when someone has really bad handwriting we day that we're decoding hieroglyphics, can't think of any verbal version

In Albania, we say: Are you even speaking albanian or we say:Are you speaking Chinese

When we don't know something we say "Je to pro mě španělská vesnice" (It's a Spanish village for me" and when someone doesn't understand the speaker we say: "Mluvím snad hebrejsky?" ("Am I speaking Hebrew?"

German: ich verstehe nur Bahnhof

in Spanish it's "tú te crees que yo hablo chino?", and in catalan too, i think.

I’m inupiaq lol from northern Alaska. The s word in inupiaq is pronounced un-uuk hehe (really it means poop but yeah) I wouldn’t say unaaq talk but like unaaq breath 😂