January 16, 2009

It's [?] to me.

Graphing the world's metaphors of incomprehensibility:

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.

Balfegor said...

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

Palladian said...

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

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"?

David said...

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

Wow, that must mean that my Grandmother was Chinese.

rhhardin said...

A fire-drill graph is needed.

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.

John Thacker said...

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