Being a lover of accent and turn of phrase not to mention the many ways
to say the same thing.
LB
No beer? Come and play areodjarekput
October 01, 2005
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16777182%255E29677,00.html
LONDON: Ever needed that elusive word to describe a fear of having no
beer? Or for a woman who looks pretty from the back but not the front?
Help is at hand from a new book rounding up the world's most
specialised lexicon.
The Meaning of Tingo, by British author Adam Jacot de Boinod, is the
result of a year of solid trawling through 280 dictionaries and many
dozens of internet sites.
Published yesterday, the title takes its name from a word in Pascuense,
the language of Easter Island, meaning to borrow objects from a
friend's house one by one, until there is nothing left.
Jacot de Boinod was working as a researcher for a BBC radio quiz when
the idea came to him.
"I was glancing through an Albanian-English dictionary, as you do -- or
rather as you don't -- and I noticed that there were 27 different words
for moustache in Albanian and 27 words for eyebrows," he said.
"That got me thinking."
The exhaustive research left Jacot de Boinod convinced that "the
culture of a country can be best summed up by its untranslatable
words".
"The interest comes both in words specific to a particular culture,
like all the words for 'banana' in Hawaiianese," he said. "But you also
have words expressing more general feelings which have never made it to
other countries."
In the former category, Hawaii reveals its character by having 47 words
for banana, not to mention 65 for types of fishing nets and 108 to
describe the sweet potato.
Among the moustache lexicon in Albania lurks "madh", meaning a bushy
variant, "posht" for one hanging down at the ends and "fshes" for a
long broom-like moustache with bristly hairs.
The severe winter climate of the Inuit could be perhaps deduced from
the word "igunaujannguaq", literally translated as "frozen walrus
carcass", a game in which a person tries to stay as stiff as possible
while being passed around a ring of people.
If that sounds rather dour, a more tempting Inuit word might be
"areodjarekput", the practice of exchanging wives for a few days to
help pass the time in the long winter nights.
Other words are still more obscure, such as "koshatnik", a dealer of
stolen cats in Russian.
Far more user-friendly is "olfrygt", or ale-fright, a Danish word whose
meaning would be recognised by millions worldwide: the fear arising
from a lack of beer.
And Japanese men have their vocabularies boosted by "baku-shan": a
woman who is attractive from the rear but not front-on.
German, with its tendency to combine words, proved a fruitful source
for Jacot de Boinod, bringing terms such as "scheissenbedauern",
meaning to feel disappointed when something turns out better than you
expected.
"Kummerspeck", or literally "grief bacon", describes the excess weight
acquired from emotion-related overeating.
Jacot de Boinod included only words that appeared in official
dictionaries, also calling embassies to double-check on the precise
meaning of a term.
Those whose authenticiy remained in doubt included "age-otori",
supposedly a Japanese term meaning "to look worse after a haircut".
Jacot de Boinod says writing the book has given him a unique insight
into dozens of little-known cultures. "Reading the dictionaries has
taught me so much more about the culture than I would have learned
reading a guide book," he said.
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: Vernacular and lingo |
01 Oct 2005 02:57:27 PM |
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Wait there is more:
As we reported on Monday, The Meaning of Tingo, by Adam Jacot de
Boinod, is celebrating words from other cultures. But Magazine readers
sent in plenty of their own, the best of which are published below.
(The Magazine however makes no undertaking for the accuracy of
translations. And accents have been left off on purpose.)
1. "My favourite is the French 'l'esprit d'escalier', or spirit of the
staircase. This is used to describe the precise moment a person comes
up with a clever retort to an embarrassing insult. It is usually after
leaving the party, and walking down the stairs that the quip comes to
mind."
Lee, Wellington, New Zealand
2. "In Chinese if you tell a man they 'dai Lu maozi', meaning 'he wears
the green hat', it means that his wife is sleeping with someone else."
Zac Teehan, Fredericton
3. "It's weird that English doesn't have words for 'vorgestern' (the
day before yesterday) and 'ubermorgen' (the day after tomorrow)."
Anke, Germany
4. "I think my favourite word, and not for its literal meaning, is the
Spanish 'puente' meaning bridge. Unlike ourselves, they cleverly place
their bank holidays on a Tuesday so that Monday will, on most
occasions, be treated as a bridge day (an extra day of holiday)
ensuring a four day weekend. Ah, the Mediterranean lifestyle..."
Gary Walker, Barcelona
5. "My favourite is 'faire du leche-vitrines' which literally means 'to
lick the windows' and translates as window-shopping.
Phil, in France
6. "I have a soft spot for the German 'luftkissenfahrzeug'. The literal
translation being 'air cushion vehicle', but to you and I it is the
simple 'hovercraft'."
Jude , Birmingham, UK
7. "In Cyprus, the instrument used to remove staples from paper is
termed a 'petalouda', literally translated into 'butterfly'. Go
figure."
Jasmine, Nicosia, Cyprus
8. "In Japanese, 'amakudari', literally descent from heaven, describes
the phenomenon of being employed by a firm in an industry one has
previously, as a government bureaucrat, been involved in regulating."
Jack L. Yohay, Nabari, Mie-ken, Japan
Tingo, nakkele and other wonders
9. "My favourite is the Spanish for handcuffs...'esposas'...mi esposa
means 'my wife'. So 'mi esposa, mis esposas' means 'my wife, my
handcuffs'."
Ben, Bristol, UK
10. "In Arabic an electrical plug adapter that allows more than one
plug to be plugged into the same socket is known as a 'harami',
literally a thief."
Brian, Jeddah
11. "There are a few more interesting German words such as
'handschuhschneeballwerfer', which means somebody, who wears gloves to
throw snow balls. It is used in general for all cowards."
Bernie, Duesseldorf
12. "In Romania 'pune-ti pofta-n cui' (literally - hang your craving in
a nail on the wall) means to forget about getting something."
Gabriel, Bucharest, Romania
13. "In Japan we call a balding man's comb over a 'bar code'."
Kevin, Tokyo
14. "The Fuegians (from Tierra del Fuego) have a succinct word -
'mamihlapinatapai' and it means 'two people looking at each other each
hoping the other will do what both desire but neither is willing to
do'."
Zephyrus, Baton Rouge, Louisiana
15. "So far as I'm aware, no other language has anything equivalent to
the Icelandic 'setja upp gestaspjot', a verbal phrase denoting the
action taken by a cat when cleaning itself, with its body curled
tightly in a circle and one back leg sticking directly up in the air.
Literally it means 'put up a guest-spear' and when a cat was seen doing
this it was supposed to indicate that visitors would be turning up."
Nicholas Jones, Cambridge, England
16. "I'm a student of the Ubykh language, which has a word -
'qaamch'ip'q'i' - that means 'a filigree metal ornament on the handle
of a whip'. It's also an idiomatic term for someone whose good or kind
outward appearance is deceptive."
Rohan Fenwick, Brisbane, Australia
17. "My favourite used to regularly appear on Austrian traffic reports
- 'geisterfahrer' or 'ghost driver' - one travelling the wrong way up
an autobahn."
Eric Pritchard, Clevedon, UK
18. "In Venezuela we have 'culebra', literally snake, but meaning a
long, morbid, sentimental soap opera. 'My wife is watching the snake,'
means that she is watching the soap opera."
Ivan, Caracas, Venezuela
19. "From Flemish: 'iets door de vingers kijken', literally it means
looking at something through the fingers, allowing something illegal or
incorrect to happen by conscious inaction."
Wouter Vandersypen, Washington DC
20. "As a native German one of my all-time favourites is the word
'gemutlich' - impossible to translate directly."
Jessica, Nottingham, UK
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