You must log in or # to comment.
Explanation: The Ancient Greeks had a term for outsiders (which we still use today), “barbarians”, which is derived from what foreign speech sounded like to Greek ears - “bar bar bar”. Nonsense!
There’s an equivalent term used in India, “mleccha”, which was used towards linguistic-cultural outsiders, including Greeks. Some suggest the word developed in much the same way - what foreign speech sounded like to Sanskrit speakers. “Mlecch mlecch mlecch”, utter gibberish!
doesn’t everyone have such a term?
It’s not always connected to onomatopoeia for gibberish, though.
Isn’t the word for Germans a many eastern countries something like mute or silent?
That is because they have nothing they need to say at the moment /s
Yes, “Niemcy/niemiecki” in Slavic
guess we all missed an opportunity there, land it is kinda funny.
wait, aren’t they both Indo-European?
Yes, but that wouldn’t have been recognized by Greece or India at the time. Indo-European is a very broad language family, and writing on linguistics at that early period was not thinking in terms of such deep-rooted connections.
feels like making fun of a stranger only to find out (much later) he’s your half-brother or something.
“ur mum”
his mum shows up
it’s also your mum
Bar bar bar bar bar
