Shakespeare did no one any favors by saying it's Greek to me.

[sitifan]

https://www.biblicaltraining.org/le...iblical-greek/nt201-00-preview-biblical-greek
(at 00:21 of the above video)
Greek is not that hard. I mean, Shakespeare did no one any favors by saying it's Greek to me.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/doing+one+a+favor
Does the sentence in bold mean "Shakespeare did not help anyone by saying it's Greek to me"?

 

[Tarheel]

Yes, and that person has no sense of humor. That famous line is in the Shakespearean play, Julius Caesar. Anyhow, I can't recall their names off the top of my head, and I don't remember it exactly, but here goes.

Roman One: What do you think about what he said?
Roman Two: It's Greek to me.

What Roman Two means is that the person was speaking Greek, which he does not understand.

 

[jutfrank]

Yes. He means to say that Shakespeare gave people the impression that Greek is hard, when in fact it isn't.

not do someone any favours

to do something that is likely to have a bad effect on you or on another…

dictionary.cambridge.org

The 'bad effect' mentioned in the dictionary entry is in this context a false impression that Greek is hard.

 

[White Hat]

Also, '(all) Greek to me' is defined here. ('If you say that something is all Greek to you, you mean that you do not understand it at all.')

 

[Tarheel]

@jutfrank I guess I have a false impression about Greek.

 

[jutfrank]

@jutfrank I guess I have a false impression about Greek.

Δεν είναι τόσο δύσκολο αν έχεις έναν καλό μεταφραστή.

 

[Piscean]

Δεν είναι τόσο δύσκολο αν έχεις έναν καλό μεταφραστή.

= It's not that difficult if you have a good translator.

 

[Tarheel]

Δεν είναι τόσο δύσκολο αν έχεις έναν καλό μεταφραστή.

And to think that they gave us the alphabet! I don't recognize any of those letters.

 

[emsr2d2]

Δεν είναι τόσο δύσκολο αν έχεις έναν καλό μεταφραστή.

And to think that they gave us the alphabet! I don't recognize any of those letters.

All the letters in red in the top quote box are the same letters in English (ignoring the accents). There are still some people who write an "e" as "ε" (including my dad, who studied Greek).