> According to Keber[24], the phraseological unit španska vas comes from the German phraseological unit »für jemanden spanische Dörfer sein«, which is a mixture of two phraseological units: »das ist mir spanisch« (used in reference to the Spanish
and German king Charles V, who introduced unknown customs to the German lands) and »für jemanden böhmische Dörfer sein« (Germans did not understand the names of the Czech (= »böhmisch«) villages).
The citation is 24. KEBER J, Slovarslovenskih frazemov (Založba ZRC, Ljubljana, 2011).
> "Wait!" I hear you saying, dear reader! "Whence come these villages into our discussion?" I am relying here on one of my older and more historically minded informants, a native German, who maintains that these village-oriented expressions and the familiar (and popular)
> Es waren mir böhmische Dörfer
> arise from the unintelligibility (to the speaker) of the names of the mentioned villages.
> According to Keber[24], the phraseological unit španska vas comes from the German phraseological unit »für jemanden spanische Dörfer sein«, which is a mixture of two phraseological units: »das ist mir spanisch« (used in reference to the Spanish and German king Charles V, who introduced unknown customs to the German lands) and »für jemanden böhmische Dörfer sein« (Germans did not understand the names of the Czech (= »böhmisch«) villages).
The citation is 24. KEBER J, Slovarslovenskih frazemov (Založba ZRC, Ljubljana, 2011).
https://people.cs.umass.edu/~rsnbrg/hardest.pdf (p332) corroborates:
> "Wait!" I hear you saying, dear reader! "Whence come these villages into our discussion?" I am relying here on one of my older and more historically minded informants, a native German, who maintains that these village-oriented expressions and the familiar (and popular)
> Es waren mir böhmische Dörfer
> arise from the unintelligibility (to the speaker) of the names of the mentioned villages.