The Meaning of Tingo Read online

  PENGUIN REFERENCE

  The Meaning of Tingo

  ‘A luscious list of linguistic one-liners that no self-respecting toilet in the land should be without’ Daily Express

  ‘Extraordinary’ Sunday Times, Books of the Year

  ‘A collection / dictionary / glossary (that it’s indefinable is one of its many strengths) of words from around the world which have bizarrely exact meanings… both educational and entertaining, and very funny as well’ Independent on Sunday

  ‘I love The Meaning of Tingo’ Benjamin Zephaniah

  ‘A pleasure to dip into’ Sunday Telegraph

  ‘An addictive book of quirky words and phrases from around the world’ Time Out

  ‘The must-have British stocking filler… this book is a gem’ Economist

  ‘I love this book… absolutely marvellous stuff’ Oldie

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Adam Jacot de Boinod’s interest in foreign languages was first aroused when doing research for the BBC programme QI and subsequently developed into a full-on vokabulyu (Russian – passion for foreign words). While searching through 280 dictionaries, 140 websites and numerous books on language, he developed an undoubted samlermani (Danish – mania for collecting), became close to being fisselig (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).

  The Meaning of Tingo

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London wc2R ORL, England

  www.penguin.com

  First published 2005

  Published in paperback 2006

  1

  Copyright © Adam Jacot de Boinod, 2005

  Illustrations copyright © Sandra Howgate, 2005

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-195457-8

  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 Straus; my illustrator Sandra Howgate; my excellent editorial team at Penguin, Nigel Wilcockson, Georgina Laycock and Sophie Lazar; and Mark McCrum for his invaluable work on the text.

  Meeting and Greeting

  ai jiao de maque bu zhang rou (Chinese)

  sparrows that love to chirp won’t put on weight

  ¡Hola!

  The first and most essential word in all languages is surely ‘hello’, the word that enables one human being to converse with another:

  aa (Diola, Senegal)

  beeta (Soninke, Mali, Senegal and Ivory Coast)

  bok (Croatian)

  boozhoo (Ojibwe, USA and Canada)

  daw-daw (Jutlandish, Denmark)

  ella (Awabakal, Australia)

  i ay (Huaorani, Ecuador)

  khaumykhyghyz (Bashkir, Russia)

  nark (Phorhépecha, Mexico)

  rozhbash (Kurdi, Iraq and Iran)

  samba (Lega, Congo)

  wali-wali (Limbe, Sierra Leone)

  xawaxan (Toltichi Yokuts, California, USA)

  yoga (Ateso, Uganda)

  yoyo (Kwakiutl, Canada)

  But it may not even be a word. In the Gilbert Islands of the Pacific, arou pairi describes the process of rubbing noses in greeting. For the Japanese, bowing is an important part of the process and a sign

  of respect: ojigi is the act of bowing; eshaku describes a slight bow (of about 15 degrees); keirei, a full bow (of about 45 degrees); while saikeirei is a very low, worshipful type of bow that involves the nose nearly touching the hands. When one meets someone extremely important, one might even consider pekopeko, bowing one’s head repeatedly in a fawning or grovelling manner.

  Just say the word

  Sometimes a single word works hard. In Sri Lanka, for example, the Sinhala word ayubowan means not only ‘good morning’, but also ‘good afternoon’, ‘good evening’, ‘good night’ and ‘goodbye’.

  Expectant

  The frustration of waiting for someone to turn up is beautifully encapsulated in the Inuit word iktsuarpok, meaning ‘to go outside often to see if someone is coming’. As for the frustration of the caller, there’s always the Russian dozvonit’sya which doesn’t simply mean to ring a doorbell, but to ring it until one gets an answer (it’s also used for getting through on the telephone).

  Hey you!

  Once the first encounter is out of the way the correct form of address is important. Most of us know the difference between the intimate French tu and the more impersonal (and polite) vous. A similar distinction exists in Arabic between anta (‘you’ singular) and antum (‘you’ plural) – addressing an important person with anta (anti is the feminine version) rather than antum would be considered impolite.

  In Vietnam there are no fewer than eighteen words for ‘you’, the use of which depends on whom you are addressing, whether a child or a senior citizen, whether formally or informally. And in the Western Australian Aboriginal language of Jiwali there are four words for ‘we’: ngali means ‘we two including you’; ngaliju means ‘we two excluding you’; nganthurru means ‘we all including you’; and nganthurraju means ‘we all excluding you’.

  Cripes!

  Exclamations are generally used to express a sudden reaction: to something frightening, incredible, spectacular, shocking or wonderful. Best not attempted by the visitor, they are better heard from the mouth of the native speaker than read off the page:

  aaberdi (Algerian) a cry used when learning fearful news

  aawwaah (Dardja, Algeria) a shout of doubt or hesitation

  aãx (Karuk, North America) how disgusting!

  aduh (Malay) ouch or wow!

  aduhai (Indonesian) an expression of admiration

  alaih (Ulwa, Nicaragua) gosh! goodness! help!

  alalau (Quechuan, Peru) brrr! (of cold)

  amit-amit (Indonesian) forgive me!

  ammazza (Italian) it’s a killer! wow!

  asshe (Hausa, Nigeria) a cry of grief at distressing news

  bambule (Italian) cheers! (preceding the lighting of a joint)

  cq (Albanian) a negative exclamation of mild disappointment

  hoppla (German) whoops!

  naa (Japanese) that’s great!

  nabocklish (Irish Gaelic) don’t meddle with it!

  oho (Hausa, Nigeria) I don’t care

  oop (Ancient Greek) a cry to make rowers stop pulling

  sa (Afrikaans) catch him!

  savul (Turkish) get out of the way!

  schwupp (German) quick as a flash

  shahbash (Anglo-Indian) well done! (or well bowled!, as said in cricket by a wicket-keeper to the bowler)

  tao (Chinese) that’s the way it goes

  taetae tiria (Cook Islands Maori) throw it away, it’s dirty!

  uf (Danish) ugh! yuk!

  usch då (Swedish) oh, you poor thing!

  y-eazziik (Dardja, Algeria) an expression used exclusively by women to criticize another person’s action

  zut (French) dash it!

  Chinwag

  The niceties of what in English is baldly known as ‘conversation’ are well caught in other languages:

  ho’oponopono (Hawaiian) solving a problem by talking it out

  samir (Persian) one who converses at night by moonlight

  begadang (Indonesian) to stay up all night talking

  glossalgos (Ancient Greek) talking till one’s tongue aches

  Breakdown in communication

  Whether the person you are talking to suffers from latah (Indonesian), the uncontrollable habit of saying embarrassing things, or from chenyin (Chinese), hesitating and muttering to oneself, conversation may not always be quite as we’d like it:

  catra patra (Turkish) the speaking of a language incorrectly and brokenly

  nyelonong (Indonesian) to interrupt without apology

  akkisuitok (Inuit) never to answer

  dui niu tanqin (Chinese) to talk over someone’s head or address the wrong audience (literally, to play the lute to a cow)

  ’a’ama (Hawaiian) someone who speaks rapidly, hiding their meaning from one person whilst communicating it to another

  dakat’ (Russian) to keep saying yes

  dialogue de sourds (French) a discussion in which neither party listens to the other (literally, dialogue of the deaf)

  mokita (Kiriwana, Papua New Guinea) the truth that all know but no one talks about

  Tittle-tattle

  Gossip – perhaps more accurately encapsulated in the Cook Island Maori word ’o’onitua, ‘to speak evil of someone in their absence’ – is a pretty universal curse. But it’s not always unjustified. In Rapa Nui (Easter Island) anga-anga denotes the thought, perhaps groundless, that one is being gossiped about, but it also carries the sense that this may have arisen from one’s own feeling of guilt. A more gentle form of gossip is to be found in Jamaica, where the patois word labrish means not only gossip and jokes, but also songs and nostalgic memories of school.

  False friends

  Those who learn languages other than their own will sometimes come across words wh
ich look or sound the same as English, but mean very different things. Though a possible source of confusion, these false friends (as linguists call them) are much more likely to provide humour – as any Englishwoman who says ‘bless’ to her new Icelandic boyfriend will soon discover: