The Meaning of Tingo: and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE MEANING OF TINGO

Adam Jacot de Boinod first acquired his vokabulyu (Russian—passion for foreign words) while working as a researcher for the BBC program QI. While searching through 280 dictionaries, 140 Web sites, and innumerable books on language, he developed a textbook case of samlermani (Danish—mania for collecting), became close to being fissilig (German—flustered to the point of incompetence), and narrowly avoided karoshi (Japanese—death from overwork). He is now intending to nglayap (Indonesian—wander far from home with no particular purpose), but for the moment lives in London.

The Meaning of Tingo

and other Extraordinary Words from around the World

Adam Jacot de Boinod

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books Ltd 2005

First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2006

Published in Penguin Books (UK) 2006

Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2007

Copyright © Adam Jacot de Boinod, 2005

Illustrations copyright © Sandra Howgate, 2005

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Jacot de Boinod, Adam.

The meaning of tingo and other extraordinary words from

around the world / Adam Jacot de Boinod.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-1012-0129-9

1. Language and languages—Foreign words and phrases. I. Title.

P326.J33 2006

418—dc22 2005055520

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Meeting and Greeting

From Top to Toe

Movers and Shakers

Getting Around

It Takes All Sorts

Falling in Love

The Family Circle

Clocking On

Time Off

Eating and Drinking

Below Par

From Cradle to Grave

Otherworldly

All Creatures Great and Small

Whatever the Weather

Hearing Things

Seeing Things

Number Crunching

What’s in a Name?

Foreword

My interest in the quirkiness of foreign words was triggered when one day, working as a researcher for the BBC quiz programme QI, I picked up a weighty Albanian dictionary to discover that they have no fewer than twenty-seven words for eyebrows and the same number for moustache, ranging from mustaqe madh, or bushy, to a mustaqe posht, one which droops down at both ends.

My curiosity rapidly grew into a passion. I was soon unable to go near a second-hand bookshop or library without seeking out the shelves where the foreign language dictionaries were kept. I would scour books in friends’ houses with a similar need to ‘pan for gold’. My collection of wonderful words with no equivalent in the English language grew even longer, and I started to make a shortlist of my favourites: nakhur, for example, is a Persian word (which may not even be known to most native speakers) meaning ‘a camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils have been tickled’; and areodjarekput, the Inuit for ‘to exchange wives for a few days only’. Many described strange or unbelievable things. When and why, for example, would a man be described as a marilopotes, Ancient Greek for ‘a gulper of coaldust’? And could the Japanese samurai really have used the verb tsuji-giri, meaning ‘to try out a new sword on a passer-by’?

Others expressed concepts that seemed all too familiar. We have all met a Zechpreller, the German description of ‘someone who leaves without paying the bill’; spent too much time with an ataoso, Central American Spanish for ‘one who sees problems with everything’; or worked with a neko-neko, Indonesian for ‘one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse’.

My passion became a quiet obsession. I combed through over two million words in hundreds of dictionaries. I trawled the Internet, phoned Embassies, and tracked down foreign language speakers who could confirm my findings. I discovered that not everything sounds the same the world over: in Afrikaans, frogs go kwaak-kwaak, in Mexico cats go tlatzomia, while in Germany the noise of Rice Crispies’ snap, crackle and popping is Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!

I found beautiful words to describe things for which we have no concise expression in English, like serein, the French for ‘the rain that falls from a cloudless sky’; or wamadat, Persian for ‘the intense heat of a sultry night’. I found words for all stages of life, from paggiq, Inuit for ‘the flesh torn when a woman delivers a baby’, through Torschlusspanik, German for ‘the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older’, to mingmu, Chinese for ‘to die without regret’. I savoured the direct logic of Danish, the succinctness of Malay, the sheer wackiness of Japanese, and realized that sometimes a dictionary can tell you more about a culture than a guidebook.

I looked at languages from all corners of the world, from the Fuegian of southernmost Chile to the Inuit of northernmost Alaska, and from the Maori of the remote Cook Islands to Siberian Yakut. Some of them describe, of course, strictly local concepts and sensations, such as the Hawaiian kapau’u, ‘to drive fish into the waiting net by striking the water with a leafy branch’; or pukajaw, Inuit for ‘firm snow that is easy to cut and provides a warm shelter’. But others reinforce the commonality of human experience. Haven’t we all felt termangu-mangu, Indonesian for ‘sad and not sure what to do’ or mukamuka, Japanese for ‘so angry one feels like throwing up’? Most reassuring is to find the thoughts that lie on the tip of an English tongue, here crystallized into vocabulary: from the Zambian language of Bemba sekaseka, ‘to laugh without reason’, through the Czech nedovtipa, ‘one who finds it difficult to take a hint’, to the Japanese bakku-shan, ‘a woman who appears pretty when seen from behind but not from the front’.

The English language has a long-established and voracious tendency to naturalize the best foreign words: ad hoc, feng shui, croissant, kindergarten. We’ve been pinching words from other cultures for centuries. Here are some we missed. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Adam Jacot de Boinod

I’ve done my best to check the accuracy of all the terms but if you have any suggestions for changes (and, of course, I’d love to know of your own favourite foreign words) do please send them in to my website: www.themeaningoftingo.com.

   Acknowledgements

I am deeply grateful to the following people for their advice and help: Giles Andreae, Martin Bowden, David Buckley, Candida Clark, Anna Coverdale, Nick Emley, Natasha Fairweather, William Hartston, Beatrix Jacot de Boinod, Nigel Kempner, Nick and Galia Kullmann, Alf Lawrie, John Lloyd, Sarah McDougall, Yaron Meshoulam, Tony Morris, David Prest, David Shariatmadari and Christopher Silvester.

In particular I must thank my agent, Peter