Robert Clements ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>It's definitely _double Dutch_, a somewhat abusive British expression (also
>used occasionally here) for the sound of other languages.  Supposedly Dutch
>sounds incomprehensible to the average Brit; so _double Dutch_ sounds
>like...  hi fi incomprehension, i guess.

I rather suspect Dutch sounds incomprehensible to most people except
the Flemish.

For me it's like Portuguese, it looks terribly familiar (i.e similar
to German in the way that Portuguese resembles Spanish) but the
pronunciation....

>Clearly hasn't reached the US, which no doubt has its own equivalent...
>wasn't the term _barbarian_ originally derived from the alleged sound of
>a foreign language?

Not quite, but you are very close.  I looked it up in the COD and found
that it doesn come from the Latin for bear, as I'd suspected, but from the
Greek-derived Latin word for "speak like a foreigner".

Deryk Barker
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