VYAKARAN: Re: Speaking in Sanskrit

bpj at netg.se bpj at netg.se
Fri Apr 11 10:03:07 UTC 1997


At 00:52 11.4.1997 +0100, Dan Lusthaus wrote:
>>In Arabic, when you tell someone he is "speaking in Sanskrit", it means
>>he is speaking nonsense, or incomprehensibly--perhaps the
>>equivalent of telling someone in English that he is speaking double-Dutch.
>>Edwin
>
>At least in the States our equivalents are "Sounds Chinese to me" or "It's
>Greek to me" (thbe latter usually for written things).
>
>Dan Lusthaus
>Flordia State University

AFAIK these expressions are pan-Occidental. We even got them in Swedish,
though "sounds like Finnish to me" and "looks like Russian to me" would be
culturally more appropriate.


BPJ


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