Metaphors

A 15-year-old boy in a village outside of Patra on the western coast of the Peloponnese was attacked by his father and uncle and sent to the hospital because he admitted to them that he was gay.

What a courageous young man! To come out to your Greek father in rural Greece, and many other places for that matter, requires an extraordinary dose of courage.

Whenever English speaking people hear something extremely difficult to comprehend an expression often used is ‘It sound Greek to me’. Have you ever wondered how the Greek language actually sounds to people from different countries? Well this young Asian youtuber from Canada put this to the test and did an experiment.

According to University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman speakers of English, Spanish, Polish, Norwegian and Swedish all use … Greek as a metaphor for the incomprehensibility as a language, as in “It’s all Greek to me”.

Yet, what do Greeks use to describe the incomprehensible?

It’s Chinese.

?[He was the man who] exerted effective control over the fracturing state.

?[He had an] attraction to absolutism.

?[Under his rule he used] the secret police to silence dissent.

?[He had a] worsening paranoia about perceived threats to his personal power and his life.