WORLD: Incomprehensible Languages

Sources: Various, via Pat Noble

English speakers who don’t understand a language may say, “It’s all Greek to me!” On a recent trip to India I wondered if a Telugu or Hindi speaker might use a similar phrase when my English was incomprehensible. This chart from Omniglot doesn’t answer that question, but it does tell us that an Arabic speaker who is not understood may ask, “Am I speaking Hindi?” There must be some interesting histories behind these idioms!

Speaking of languages, check out The Lord’s Prayer Spoken in 8 Ancient Languages. Beautiful.

Receiving the Scriptures in your heart language makes a big impact on your ability to understand and apply them, as Wycliffe Global Alliance reminds us in a recent story, Now I Understand! It includes the testimony of a Japanese Deaf man sharing the dramatic difference that the Japanese Sign Language Bible is making in his life.

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