All Greek to me (source:www.fantasticfiction.co.uk)

Back in my previous work, I had to do a lot of conference calls with clients. There were also many chances for me to conduct customized trainings to clients. Most of the stuff I talked about was, of course, related with how the search engine works or how to configure or customize search applications. Fot that purpose, I had to talk a lot about a few programming languages. Most of the people who have computer science background were totally fine with those stuff. But, there were also many times that the people in the client’s side have no CS background. I found that it was very challenging.

One day, I was having a conference call in which I basically did two hours training using web meeting. There were around 4 or 5 people from the client. And, many of them did not have any CS background. I tried really hard to convey the knowledge effectively but it was still challenging.

So…. at one point, one of the people from the client asked me a question. I tried to give some examples to help her to understand better. And, she was able to understand it. Then, she said, “Thank you for explaining it again, giving me a good example! Now, I can understand. Before, it was all Greek to me.”

Hearing her saying, I knew what she meant. But, I thought it is an expression she made up and I moved on to the next slide. About 30 minutes later, I talked about something and she did not understand again and asked me another question. At the end of my answer, I remembered the expression she used and thought it would be good to use a similar expression but a little bit differently to her. So, I said, “Is it clearer now? Hope it is not all Latin to you anymore.”

Interestingly, they did understand what I meant and moved on and the meeting was done. Then, a few weeks later from the meeting, I heard another person, saying the same expression she used, “It is all Greek to me.” Then, I realized that it must be one of the expressions in English people use a lot. So, I searched the expression. And……. There it is. It is an expression American people use. Duh! I hit my forehead, talking to me, ‘they must have thought that I am so weird using Latin instead of Greek.’

What do you think? Is this expression weird? “It is all Latin to me!”

Here is the definition of the expression.

I do not undertand any of it. It does not make sense to me.

So…. when are you going to use this expression? You can totally use this one when doctors explain what is going on with your body. Don’t you agree?

What if you understand things someone says? You can say, “I get it!” or “I get that!” You can use this one when I explain how to develop applications. 🙂

My question is why it is Greek, not Latin or Hebrew or even like Korean?