Comment by frodetb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by frodetb | Hacker News Reader

This paper reads like a long-form-shitpost of the highest quality. Both made me laugh and taught me something interesting. Of course, which language another uses to explain that something sounds like gibberish does not tell you anything about which is harder. And, judging by their flimsy yet insistent and very eloquent justification of their methodology, the authors were well aware of that.

It is very cool to see Chinese coming out on top. As for the Norwegian that they left blank, I'll be happy to add that we use Greek to express that something is unintelligible:

    Det er helt Gresk for meg.

Relevant Wikipedia article about "Greek to me" and variant in other languages:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_to_me

We say that in English too...i think Shakespeare used it. I wonder if Europeans non-Greek have been saying that since Roman (Latin) times as a kind of fun description.

https://grammarist.com/idiom/its-greek-to-me-and-its-all-gre...

Popularized by Shakespeare, but predates him as a latin phrase used by scribes:

  Graecum est; non legitur, which means “It is Greek and therefore is impossible to read.”

You're right, that line from Shakespeare is even quoted in the paper. From the list of sayings they had collected from various languages, Greek seems like the most popular comparison, followed by Chinese. But since there's a Greek saying that uses Chinese in its comparison, it is Chinese that ends up at the end of the graph.

Edit: I went back to check and that is not right. Chinese wins out by a lot. I simply misremembered.

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