I only understand railway station

[PtolemysXX]

The phrase in the subject is a literal translation of German saying “ich verstehe nur Bahnhof” – meaning “I do not [want to] understand anything”.

Once I reach certain point in language learning I try to listen to radio broadcasts in the target language. The first impression is invariably a shock: “ich verstehe nur Bahnhof”.

If I manage to overcome that first hurdle, keep learning and get a better feel of the new language, I may reach a level where I understand “fifty-fifty”. In my native Polish I would say “piąte przez dziesiąte” meaning “five [divided] by ten”. I wish there would be finer granularity, like “three by ten” or “eight by ten” but for some reason nobody says so.

I wonder if the languages you speak have some funny or weird ways to say “I do not understand anything at all”.

[Corinnebelle]

Can't get one's head around it, it's beyond me, it's all greek to me. Not as good as I don't understand railway station.

Here 40 brilliant idioms from other languages

The challenge of idioms for language learners.

Found these when trying to think of English phrases.

[Davey944676]

"It's all Double Dutch!" is a fairly common British one. It can refer to an actual language you don't understand, or perhaps some baffling technical jargon or overcomplicated wording. That sort of thing.

The last person I heard using the phrase, for example, was getting frustrated with an official form, and understandably so - there seemed to be no way to fill it in without contradicting yourself.

[Cifi]

I love the idea of "double Dutch" which I didn't know before. Thank you, [mention]Davey944676[/mention]

[Explorer]

• In Spanish: suena a chino (it sounds like Chinese)
• In Portuguese: é grego pra mim (it's Greek to me)

[Steve579062]

If you want to get really weird with English then you should try Cockney rhyming slang. Cockney refers to someone born near Bow Bell in London.

You could say...... apples and pears for stairs. Plates of meat for feet.

Plenty more here... https://londontopia.net/londonism/fun ... phrases/

Reading through the comments it seems most people get these wrong and everyone is an expert.

[Corinnebelle]

I just was reading this post if the translator is correct it says we were nostril to nostril which is another way of saying neck and neck.

[PtolemysXX]

I just was reading this post if the translator is correct it says we were nostril to nostril which is another way of saying neck and neck.

If the position of the nose determines which horse wins the race then this is a more accurate expression .

Checking the post that you refered to reminded me of some funny phenomenon that I observe when using google translator passing from language A (not English) to language B (also not English).

"A" was Russian in this case, I used German as B1 and Polish as B2

Word "гонка" translates well to "Wettrennen" in B1, "wyścig" in B2.

But if I take the entire phrase "в этих социальных гонках" it yields "soziale Rassen" in B1 and "rasy społeczne" in B2 (I have changed the case to nominative). It does not make sense. I believe this happens because English (language X) is used as proxy for all translations, so "гонка" transitions first to "race" and this word in turn has double meanings (which is not the case in the original): "competition" or "[human] race". For an individual word translation google picks the first meaning as a base for the X to B translation but for the entire phrase the AI from Google somehow prefers the latter choice...

This behavior becomes particularly prominent if I attempt translations between related languages, e.g. Czech and Polish. Google still uses English as proxy (I believe) and due to that language features that do not exist in English are lost on the way and the simplest sentences do not pass through properly.

Which means that it is still worthwile to learn languages, AI is not quite there yet .

[Chrisinom]

• In Spanish: suena a chino (it sounds like Chinese)
• In Portuguese: é grego pra mim (it's Greek to me)

In German: Das kommt mir Spanisch vor (Me parece español)

[LICA98]

in Finnish we say "se on minulle täyttä hepreaa" (it's completely Hebrew for me)

[Olav]

In Norwegian we say: "Jeg skjønner ikke bæret" which literally means 'I don't understand the berry'.

[Steve579062]

I like the phrase " a fish rots from the head down" in Russian.

It is used when trying to stop corruption. Meaning chop of the head first and the rest can be saved.

[Steve579062]

in Finnish we say "se on minulle täyttä hepreaa" (it's completely Hebrew for me)

We have " it's all Greek to me" in English. Often used whilst trying to understand instruction for putting furniture together.

Incidentally, IKEA now use little pictures instead of lots of instructions in various languages.

[Dana_Dany Danuta]

In Polish we say:

• "to dla mnie chińszczyzna, niczego nie rozumiem" (it's chinese for me, i don't understand anything)

• "udajesz greka" (you're pretending to be greek)

[PtolemysXX]

I like the phrase " a fish rots from the head down" in Russian.

like in German: "Der Fisch fängt vom Kopf an zu stinken".

[Cifi]

• In Spanish: suena a chino (it sounds like Chinese)
• In Portuguese: é grego pra mim (it's Greek to me)

In German: Das kommt mir Spanisch vor (Me parece español)

But, does this really say the same? I'd understand it as "it sounds suspicious / it might not be true" more or less, while "ich verstehe nur Bahnhof" is more like "I don't understand anything at all" (and therefore can't tell whether it the information is correct or not). More similar in that respect might be "das sind böhmische Dörfer für mich"?

[Deleted User 5705]

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