Bohemian village
“This is a Bohemian village for me ”, or also: “These are Bohemian villages for me”, is an older, still in use German expression for: “That is completely unknown to me”, or: “I don't understand that. "
Origin and Distribution
The expression originally comes from the Habsburg Monarchy , which from 1526 also included the Kingdom of Bohemia (countries of the Bohemian Crown: Bohemia , Moravia , the County of Glatz and Silesia ). In the outskirts of Bohemia, called German Bohemia or later called Sudetenland , German was spoken, in the heartland, however, apart from German-speaking islands such as Iglau or downtown Prague , Czech (at that time mainly "Bohemian"). For German-speaking travelers, for example to Prague , both the place names and the residents were incomprehensible.
The saying was and is still widespread throughout the German-speaking area. A poem by Christian Morgenstern begins with: Palmström travels with a Herr von Korf to a so-called Bohemian village. Everything remains incomprehensible to him there [...]. Most of the places in the linguistic border area have always had Czech and German names (Kuttenberg = Kutná Hora , Marienbad = Mariánské Lázně ).
In Bohemia itself, the Czechs use the same opportunity to speak of the “ Spanish village (španělská vesnice) ” (cf.: It seems Spanish to me ). In English we say of a similar occasion "It's Greek to me!" (I do not Greek ), "It's Hebrew to me!" (I do not Hebrew ) and "That's Double Dutch!" (That's double dutch !). The Polish equivalent would be “chińszczyzna” (that's Chinese to me) or “siedzieć, jak na tureckim kazaniu” (sitting like in the Turkish sermon). In Slovak, in this case, they say that someone “speaks like a Hottentot ”.
In Poland there is also the expression “jak czeski film” (like a Czech film) - in the sense of “not to be understood”, although the primary meaning is 'strange mess'.
See also
- Bohemian village , later Bohemian-Rixdorf , today in Berlin-Neukölln around Richardstrasse
- " Gibberish "
- " Rotwelsch "
