that would be Volapük, the first major attempt at making a constructed, universal language. however, its creator was so resistant to changes and updates to his creation that the Volapük community fizzled out in the late 1800s/early 1900s.

Wow, that's actually the answer! Impressive! I never would have found out. What's the corresponding expression in Danish?

"Det er det rene volapük" "It is pure volapük" This is the most common expression I've encountered.

It would be “volapyk” in Danish, we don’t use ü.

I love your username :D And yeah, sat there like, is it with a 'y' in Danish? I can't remember...

Well y is pronounced like a ü, essentially y is the scandinavian ü

That vowel annoys me so much. In some languages it’s i, in some languages it’s u, and there’s no way to tell which one is what. Like, can’t it make up its mind and be just one thing ffs? Same deal with j

Well in Danish it is not pronounced like "u". It is closer to the german "ü", which is completly different

It's like a surfer saying "duuuuuude".

But you still say "Müsli" and not "Mysli", like we swedes do.

No We don’t we do not do anything like the Swedes - if anything - you do it like us.

Müsli is common to see, but the correct spelling in Danish is mysli.

The correct spelling in all languages is “mysli.”

For the sake of getting along let's just compromise Mÿsli

përfëct.

No, "Mysli" is correct in Danish.

So what you're saying is if we had some kind of universal language this wouldn't be an issue

The same phrase is used in Esperanto. Con-lang beef is real

🗣️ THE ZAZA GOT ME SPEAKING ESPERANTO

Hey I just asked that guy if he has heard of Esperanto! It's my favorite universal language!

(I'm so sorry I must do this) I mean it *does* have new radio shows it must be good

New radio shows?

bring me the idiotic B. Gilson

That's so funny. Having the name of your constructed language become a slang word for gibberish that is still used centuries later must be the ultimate disrespect lmao

"You are without a doubt the worst conlang I've ever heard of." "But you have heard of me."

I mean... I have *now*...

Even funnier. Most Danes wouldn't know that volapyk is a language. It's simply become a word for nonsense or gibberish.

Lmao that’s really funny Poor sod that made the language for universal communication ended up making the equivalent of gibberish

Saying ur creating a universal language then having it die bc ur too resistant to changes and updates is the most ironic shit of all time lmao

That's an ongoing "Who's this clown" to the guy who made it oh my god

How interesiting. I once lived in the small town in which Volapük was "invented", Litzelstetten on Lake Constance.

volapuk is that well-known in denmark?

It is the word gibberish here and not much more. TIL the story behind that word..

Have you heard of Esperanto ? My favorite universal language!

Denmark do be beefing with literal gibberish

Considering they speak danish, it's the only way for them to punch down,.

[Relevant](https://youtu.be/s-mOy8VUEBk?feature=shared)

Kamelåså gang represent

That's too funny. Take my measly upvote.

I don't know the flag, but as a Dane i believe the word is "Volapyk" - An expression simply meaning words or sounds that make no sense, or is just gibberish. EDIT: To add, i've heard some people use "They may aswell have been speaking Russian" aswell. EDIT 2: Found the source - I use the sentence many times, never knew the history: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volapük](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volapük)

"words or sounds that make no sense, or is just gibberish." So..just ordinary danish?

Kamelåså!

How dare you!?..... but yes..

You nordics talk shit about Danish all the time but to my southern ears it is Swedish that sounds like a joke.

For Russian it is more common to say "Det er en by i Rusland". Somebody would ask you about something and you can reply "For me that's a town in Russia", meaning you don't know anything about it.

in turkish, the sentence is "fransız kaldım" (fransız is the demonym not the language) and the literal translation is "i've been left french" or "its as if i'm french". basically its supposed to mean something like "i'm foreign to all of this" or "i'm not familiar with this"

And it's not specifically related to language too. It's about being French, not speaking French. So it's about being foreign to a culture. Also, there's a second alternative "anladıysam Arab olayım" which means "I'll be an Arab if I understand this". And it's just unfortunate, because it's downright racism lol.

exactly. thats what i was saying. i've also heard people say bad handwriting looks like arabic

Is that racism? Native speaker here, "anladıysam Arap olayım" always just read to me as "If I understood this, let me be an Arab; via my not becoming an Arab, I didn't understand this". I definitely could be wrong, though.

Germany uses both Spanish and Chinese

"This seems Spanish to me" vs "Am I speaking Chinese?"

The same goes for Italy : “This is Arabic to me/ it is Arabic!” “Am I speaking Chinese?”

"These are all Spanish villages to me" "This is Spanish to me" is more "I'm suspecting something fishy/strange here", don't you think?

Portugal also uses both Greek and Chinese.

Also Czeck (Bohemian villages)

Interesting, we have that in German, too (böhmische Dörfer)

As you can see on the map, here in Czechia we say "it's a Spanish village to me"

And train station

Isn't the expression "Ich höre nur Bahnhof"? (I can only hear train station).

No, its "Ich versteh nur Bahnhof", "höre" would be "hearing"

So does like half of balkans

In France, it’s “all Hebrew to me”.

Same in Finland.

Torille.

Interesting, in Israel we usually say "It is Chinese to me".

It would be a lot funnier if the Israeli expression was about Hebrew too.

Or Japanese, I mainly use Japanese

"C'est du chinois" is more common.

נשמע לי כמו בעית יכולת

בהחלט

I heard a small amount of people say the opposite for French in Hebrew lol

What does one do when they speak both French and Hebrew?

That is, perplexingly, the only time a French person is stunned into silence. ;-)

My math teacher was one of these people who could speak both. The inherent contradiction made her an asshole.

"it's all Hebrew to me", said a student. The mademoiselle (madam?) raised an eyebrow and said, without missing a bit: "like it's hard??"

We use "Chinese" en Hispanic america. "me estas hablando en chino"

I've heard "Griego" in Colombia.

Talking about Colombia, in 100 years of solitude describes an alphabet as "laundry hanging in a string/wire". Garcia Marquez is describing Sanskrit.

Wow, great description!

In Poland we both say that about Chinese and Greek

Wasn't "double dutch" in UK?

Yes, but it isn’t in much use now; it does feature in an Elvis Costello song though.

“It’s all Greek to me.” I’ve never heard “double Dutch”.

I’ve heard it but not very often, though tbh I don’t hear ‘it’s all Greek to me’ often either. 99% of the time it’s just ‘what’.

Used to hear me grandparents say "double Dutch" all the time, but I haven't heard anyone under 40 use either. In Britain why use normal word when swear word do trick? "You fucking what" "Sounds like a load of old bollocks" "Talking shite"

yeah but it would still be perfectly normal to say it

u wot m8

I've never heard of"it's Greek to me". I'd always say "it's double Dutch". Funny how it's the opposite.

Is it some regional expression?

I thought double Dutch was like pig Latin. A bit of a kids made up thing. I've also heard people say "am I speaking Chinese?" When you're trying to explain something and just getting a blank look in return.

I thought double dutch was jump rope with two ropes?

It is. Idk what these guys are talking about.

Finland having the most non-sensical language out there, yet never being mentioned once Also, yes, I understand the irony of having Israel as my flair here

Ymmärrätte kuitenkin, ette vaan myönnä.

Not sure what the Greek term is but in Ireland I've heard the phrase "It might as well be in Chinese" quite a bit.

"it's all Greek to me"

The Greek term is not a real language at all. We just say «Αυτά είναι αλαμπουρνέζικα», which means Alaboornese, which is not a real language at all.

But we also say about chinese as the map suggests. Like "Κινέζικα μιλάς;" etc.

What do the Italians say? What language is that?

Probably Arabic

It is indeed Arabic, although I've also seen Turkish in old comics

"Parlo Arabo?" / "Am I speaking Arabic? sarcastic expression

As others said, it's Arabic, and the flag in question is the flag of [the Arab league](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League).

Arab, but we also say Aramhaic

Amharic (Ethiopia) or Aramaic (Syria)?

Aramaic. Sometimes also *Ostrogoto*.

I love Ostrogoto! What is Italy's link to Aramaic speakers?

The Gospels

I had a teacher who loved to say Austro-Hungarian

My grandma used to say that. Also Serbo-Croat.

In Bosnian when we don't understand something we often say that it's "špansko selo" (literally: Spanish village) for us, hence the Spanish flag over Bosnia. 😄 There is, however, one regarding Chinese in situations where we want to ask the other side (who does not seem to understand us) what is the problem, e.g. why doesn't he/she understand us: "Je l' govorim kineski?" (literally: Am I speaking Chinese?)

In France, Chinese often comes up. However, we also bring up Arabic when a message is increasingly distorted the more it's spread out (le "téléphone arabe"). We witheringly mock someone who cannot speak another language properly by nicknaming them "Spanish cows" ("Il/Elle parle l'anglais comme une vache espagnole"). The former is "quite" racist while the latter is a take a tad too far for a people who can't/won't speak English at all 🤡

"Vache espagnole" is a distortion of "Basque espagnol" a Spanish Basque.

This is the stuff I live for on Reddit. Thanks a bunch mate.

*Téléphone arabe* is mostly used as the name for the children's game "telephone", I'm not sure if it really has racist undertones

"Telephone game" is known as "Chinese Whispers" - in English.

I was taught it as "vache d'Espagne", are both used or was I just taught wrong?

Never heard “vache d’Espagne”, if it exists it must be very limited in scope as I am familiar with “vache espagnole” both from local ways of speaking in three regions and national media.

Lol what. "du travail d'arabe", "l'arabe de service" are quite racists, but there's nothing racist about "téléphone arabe".

In Israel we use Chinese

We do in Egypt too, and sometimes Hindi or even Hebrew lol

To Hebrew speakers Arabic sounds similar enough for it to not sound like absolute gibberish, kinda like when you recognize English words in German. is that not the same for Arabic speakers with Hebrew?

It is the same, but I guess Hebrew rolls off the tongue. Arabic = Araby while Hebrew = Ebry

ah, Ghaddafi would be proud seeing this PS. if you don't get it check out ghaddafi Switzerland map

We say of someone that doesn't understand something, that it's "Spanish village to him".

Špansko selo, perhaps? Haha.

Exactly. Španska vas.

Howdy, neighbor.

In Romania there’s also one about Turkish

Probably volapyk, but it's all greek to me

In Slovenia "Spanish village" is used for something completely unknown, like in "computers are a Spanish village for me".

In German it's Czech villages! (Böhmische Dörfer)

who would win this hypothetical war

In Iceland Hebrew is for sure one of the languages mentioned in this context but Chinese is probably more common, at least among younger people. When something looks foreign or strange in Iceland it is said to look Spanish...

Every map like this is always guaranteed 100% wrong when it comes to Iceland

All is well but why san andreas text?

All you had to do was upvote the damn post, wunjoric

In Spanish another option is Aramaic

Whta?

when you use another language’s name to refer to nonsense, like “you’re speaking greek to me”

The term is actually “it’s all Greek to me”

yeah i wasn’t remembering

We actually have two in Danish. “Volapyk” and “Kaudervælsk” (the latter meaning the Romansh language spoken in south-east Switzerland).

In German we also have "Kauderwelsch", good to know what it actually means

In Dutch too "Koeterwaals"

Germany technically says 'es ist mir Wurst' or 'it's sausage to me' and therefore needs a sausage flag

Sausage phrase is more along the lines "I understand you and absolutely don't care about the things you're talking about" instead of "I don't understand a thing". At least this is the context I always encountered.

And who do I kill for using that font?

why are you using the GTA font?

It's a screenshot of a video from TikTok. Idk why they use that font

as a human from turkey, we use arabic as it

It is not a country, that's the flag for Volapük, an auxiliary conlag. Kind of Esperanto's competition. O personally love that language but yeah it sounds kinda weird lmao

Zamenhof even dissed it

Volapük

Omg Volapꞟk hii

Isn't Bulgarian Patagonian?

In the US I’ve heard Chinese but also the phrase “it’s all Greek to me”, but that’s an older phrase

In the UK we also say double Dutch

In Denmark we also use greek

To be fair to spaniards we germans also say "ich verstehe nur bahnhof", meaning "I only understand train station" when we don't understand something, which is less targetted and more stupid

Don't know it's all greek to me

Never heard of french being used in this context in Turkey its either chinese or arabic

Wrong. In Turkish, we use Arabic for express something that is beyond understanding.

In Swedish we use both Greek and Rotwelsch in expressions. For understandable reasons there's no flag representing Rotwelsch, so the Greek flag works just fine.

In Romanian the phrase they triedto reference was the one you say when someone doesn’t do what you say, which is “Are you Turkish?” (“Eşti turc?”) I personally don’t know of any phrase that’s about Chinese, or that’s about something being out of comprehension, if anyone wants to correct me, please do

For most of the Spanish people the Catalan language is "Polish".

Turks say Arabic now I believe

We have two, more common one is “I am French to the topic” other one is “If I understand, let me be an Arab”

Greek? When my family couldn't understand what I said they said "Are you speaking Swahili?"

Does anybody know the Swedish expression? I can’t figure out what is mentioned with Greece

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Romanians when we don't understand something: "What is this Chinesery?" Romanians when you don't understand something we said: "What don't you understand? Are you Turkish?"

For French, I believe the phrase "Vache espagnol" Is used, as in "Spanish cow*

Te pol pianzar anca in greco no te ło conpro

Funny how for Italy it's not "it's like greek to me" cause a good amount of students have to learn both Latin and greek, and some others can choose between Chinese, German and Spanish.

Gibberia

Oh my fucking god I did not know Volapük had a flag

Finland and Iceland have nothing

Ese pavo habla en chino. No se le entiende lo que dicez

In romania we say "esti turc?", which means "are you turkish?" Ironic cause romania had a lot of wars with the turks in the 17th-19th century time period

What's the flag on Italy?

I wonder how different languages say the word "gibberish". In French, we say *charabia*, *baragouiner* or *galimatias*. 

romania is turkey “esti turc?” when someone is too dumb to understand

As a Slovenian, I have never heard anyone use Spanish in this manner.

Ive never heard an Irish person say its Greek, you commonly hear "it may as well be in Chinese" though

Double Dutch is probably more the UK.

We never say Greek, we would say Chinese

In Germany we say: "I only understand train station" and I think that's beautiful 🥲

We have a lot of “Dutch” phrases in the UK as well, due to our one-time naval rivalry with the Netherlands. For example, “going Dutch” is splitting the bill, “double Dutch” is nonsense, “triple Dutch” is even more nonsense, and “Dutch courage” is the newfound boldness you discover after a few too many ales

Interesting map, in Austria we have a dialect proverb that calls someone speaking gibberish to be speaking "Behmisch" I think it's meant to mean Bohemian. I have heard this more often than anyone saying Spanish isn't comprehensible.

Of course. Their expression is that my language I beyond understanding when so many words in english come from greek

Its greek to me is dead. No one says it but to quote Shakespeare.

To those picking on Spanish of French... come on guys. They use the same alphabet.

Bosnia is definetly Chinese

along with hebrew finland also had german, well we say "pigs german"