Language Log » The directed graph of stereotypical incomprehensibility

« previous post | next post » Yuval Pinter writes: When an English speaker doesn't understand a word one says, it's "Greek to me". When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it "sounds like Chinese". I've been told the Korean equivalent is "sounds like Hebrew". Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph? Well, there's a Wiki

[pcod]

おもしろい

[itochan]

いちばん下、ペルシャ語→日本語　とある。矢印が何を意味してるのか理解できてないから、何もわからない。