I Never Knew There Was a Word For It Read online

Warmwassergeige (German) a souped-up motorcycle (literally, warm-water violin)

  teplushka (Russian) a heated goods van used for carrying people

  bottom-bottom wata wata (African Creole) a submarine

  gung gung chi chuh (Chinese) a bus

  vokzal (Russian) a railway station (named after Vauxhall in London)

  voiture-balai (French) the last train or bus (literally, broom-vehicle as it sweeps up the latecomers)

  Set of wheels

  One particular form of transport is pre-eminent in the modern world: whether normal, or convertible (spider in Italian), or vintage (oldtimer in German). What lets most cars down, however, are the people driving them, be it the viande paraguero (Caribbean Spanish), the Sunday driver (literally, an umbrella stand); or the Gurtmuffel (German), someone who doesn’t wear a seat belt. Then, of course, there’s the way people drive:

  sgasata (Italian) a sudden and violent acceleration

  appuyer sur le champignon (French) to put one’s foot down (literally, to stamp on the mushroom)

  Geisterfahrer (German), a person driving on the wrong side of the road

  Road rage

  Hazards are all too common, whether in the car …

  desgomarse (Caribbean Spanish) to have bad tyres

  ulykkesbilen (Danish) an ill-fated car

  Blechlawine (German) a huge traffic jam (literally, a sheet-metal avalanche)

  matadero (Spanish, Central America) a car scrapheap (literally, a slaughterhouse)

  … or out of it. The French have the most evocative expressions to describe both the reckless pedestrian – viande à pneux, meat for tyres, and the knock suffered by a cyclist – l’homme au marteau, literally, the man with the hammer.

  Apache cars

  The Apache people of the USA name the parts of cars to correspond to parts of the body. The front bumper is daw, the chin or jaw; the front fender is wos, the shoulder; the rear fender is gun, the arm and hand; the chassis is chun, the back; the rear wheel is ke, the foot. The mouth is ze, the petrol-pipe opening. The nose is chee, the bonnet. The eyes are inda, the headlights. The forehead is ta, the roof.

  The metaphorical naming continues inside. The car’s electrical wiring is tsaws, the veins. The battery is zik, the liver. The petrol tank is pit, the stomach. The radiator is jisoleh, the lung; and its hose, chih, the intestine. The distributor is jih, the heart.

  False friends

  punk (Japanese) flat tyre

  chariot (French) trolley

  rower (Polish) bicycle

  fly (Danish) aeroplane

  escape (Portuguese) car exhaust or gas leak

  arrear (Spanish) to drive on

  jam (Mongolian) road

  Running on time

  The Japanese have some fine vocabulary for trains: gaton gaton is an electric train; gotongoton describes trains rattling along; shoo shoo po po is the sound of a steam train; while kang kang kang is the noise of the level crossing. Kakekomi-josha describes all too vividly rushing onto a train to beat the closing doors, a common sight on Tokyo’s underground.

  On reflection

  Separatist

  Many of the languages around the world are interrelated (for example, Spanish, French and Italian are all Latin languages), but by contrast, ‘isolate languages’ are those that do not appear to be related to any other at all. Some languages became isolate in historical times, after all their known relatives became extinct; the Piraha language, for example, spoken along a tributary of the Amazon, is the last surviving member of the Mura family of languages. Similar isolates include Burushaski, which is spoken in two Himalayan valleys; the Gilyak and Ket languages of Siberia; and Nivkh, a Mongolian language.

  The Basque language Euskara is perplexing. It bears no resemblance at all to the languages of its surrounding countries. Some similarities with Georgian have made linguists think it could be related to languages from the Caucasus. Others have tried to relate it to non-Arabic languages from the north of Africa. A more likely hypothesis argues that Euskara developed where it is still spoken and has always been the language of the Basques, who were gradually surrounded by people speaking other unrelated languages.

  It Takes All Sorts

  gading yang tak retak (Indonesian)

  there is no ivory that isn’t cracked

  Tolerant

  When it comes to personality, some people seem to have been put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else:

  cooperar (Spanish, Central America) to go along willingly with someone else to one’s own disadvantage

  abbozzare (Italian) to accept meekly a far from satisfactory situation

  ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo) someone who is ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

  Flattering

  Others take things too far:

  vaseliner (French) to flatter (literally, to apply vaseline)

  happobijin (Japanese) a beauty to all eight directions (a sycophant)

  Radfahrer (German) one who flatters superiors and browbeats subordinates (literally, a cyclist)

  Fawning

  The Japanese have the most vivid description for hangers-on: kingyo no funi. It literally means ‘goldfish crap’ – a reference to the way that a fish that has defecated often trails excrement behind it for some time.

  Egotists

  Sweet-talking others is one thing; massaging your own ego can be another altogether:

  echarse flores (Spanish) to blow your own trumpet (literally, to throw flowers to yourself)

  il ne se mouche pas du pied (French) he has airs above his station (literally, he doesn’t wipe his nose with his foot)

  yi luan tou shi (Chinese) courting disaster by immoderately overestimating one’s own strength (literally, to throw an egg against a rock)

  tirer la couverture à soi (French) to take the lion’s share, all the credit (literally, to pull the blanket towards oneself)

  The awkward squad

  But there are worse horrors than the merely conceited:

  ataoso (Spanish, Central America) one who sees problems with everything

  kibitzer (Yiddish) one who interferes with unwanted advice

  nedovtipa (Czech) one who finds it difficult to take a hint

  neko-neko (Indonesian) to have a creative idea which only makes things worse

  mukzib (Persian) one who eggs on or compels another to tell a lie

  iant (Serbian) an attitude of proud defiance, stubbornness and self-preservation, sometimes to the detriment of everyone else – or even oneself

  er gibt seinen Senf dazu (German) one who always has something to say even if no one else cares (literally, he brings his mustard along)

  Pariah

  Some people are able to tough it out whatever happens, imposing their faults on others till the day they die. Others are more sensitive:

  scrostarsi (Italian) to remove oneself as if one were a scab (to move or go away because one’s presence is not desired)

  ulaia (Hawaiian) to live as a hermit because of disappointment

  panaphelika (Ancient Greek) to be deprived of all playmates

  Lazybones

  Others like to spend time alone for altogether different reasons:

  kopuhia (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) someone who disappears instead of dedicating himself to his work

  linti (Persian) someone who idles his day away lying under a tree

  nubie yam (Waali, Ghana) a farmer who points to his farm but does little more (literally, finger farm)

  gober les mouches (French) to stand by idly (literally, to gulp down flies)

  zamzama (Arabic) to waft along in a relaxed style

  goyang kaki (Indonesian) relaxing and enjoying oneself as problems are sorted out by others (literally, to swing one’s legs)

  kalincak-kelincok (Balinese, Indonesia) the back and forth, here and there or up and down of genuine drifting

  Otherwise engaged

  Some take idleness
to another level:

  luftmensch (Yiddish) an impractical dreamer having no definite business or income

  viajou na maionese (Portuguese) to live in a dream world (literally, to travel in the mayonnaise)

  nglayap (Indonesian) to wander far from home with no particular purpose

  umudrovat se (Czech) to philosophize oneself into the madhouse

  Situation vacant

  Given that many outsiders think of the Japanese as a nation of workaholics, the language has an unusual number of verbs to describe different states of idleness: boketto is to gaze vacantly into space without thinking or doing anything; bosabosa is to sit around idly not doing what needs to be done; gorogoro is to spend time doing nothing (including lolling in a recumbent position); guzuguzu is to vacillate, procrastinate or to stretch out a job; while bura-bura is to wander around aimlessly, looking at the sights with no fixed destination in mind.

  Manic obsessive

  No one, as far as we know, died of laziness. Frantic activity, however, is another thing …

  Putzfimmel (German) a mania for cleaning

  samlermani (Danish) a mania for collecting

  Grüebelsucht (German) an obsession in which even the simplest facts are compulsively queried

  muwaswas (Arabic) to be obsessed with delusions

  potto (Japanese) to be so distracted or preoccupied that you don’t notice what is happening right in front of you

  … and can lead to karoshi (Japanese), death from overwork.

  The German mindset

  A distinguishing feature of the German language is its creation of evocative concepts by linking different words together, useful for depicting not just characters but states of mind. Most of us know Schadenfreude (literally, damage joy), which describes what we hardly dare express: that feeling of malicious pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. But there are numerous others. We’ve all had a boss who’s suffered from Betriebsblindheit: organizational blindness; and who has not worked alongside someone who is fisselig: flustered to the point of incompetence? That very same person could be described as a Korinthenkacker: one who is overly concerned with trivial details.

  False friends

  fatal (German) annoying

  hardnekkig (Dutch) stubborn

  lawman (Aukan, Suriname) crazy person

  estúpido (Portuguese) rude

  morbido (Italian) soft, tender

  xerox (French) unoriginal or robotic individual

  extravagans (Hungarian) eccentric

  konsekvent (Swedish) consistent

  Fools and rogues

  There’s a rich stream of invective running through the world’s languages when it comes to people we regard as less intelligent than ourselves. The Cantonese equivalent to ‘you’re as thick as two short planks’ is the equally graphic nie hochi yat gau faan gam, ‘you look like a clump of cooked rice’, while the German equivalent to ‘not quite all there’ is nicht alle Tassen im Schrank haben, ‘not to have all the cups in the cupboard’ (not to have all one’s marbles).

  Meanwhile the Maoris of the Cook Islands have the telling word varevare, which means ‘to be very young and still quite hopeless’.

  Schlumps and schleppers

  When it comes to insults, few languages can compete with Yiddish. In this wonderfully evocative language, a fool can be not just a shmutte or a schlump but a nar, a tam, a tipesh, a bulvan, a shoyte, a peysi, a kuni lemel, a lekish, or even a shmenge.

  Not content with these, the language gets more specific. A loser is a schlepper, a shmugeggeshnorrer, a paskudnik, a pisher, a yold or even a no-goodnik. A klutz is a clumsy, oafish bungler and a lekish ber schlemiel is a fool without luck. A fool who is not just stupid but inept is a schlimazl. A farshpiler is one who has lost all his money gambling. The saddest of all is perhaps the nisrof, the burnt-out fool.

  Other fine insults in Yiddish have included:

  nebbish a nobody

  nudnick a yakky, aggressively boring person

  putz a simpleton

  shlub a clumsy and ill-mannered person

  shmegegge a foolish person and a sycophant

  shmendrick a timid nonentity

  shnook a nice but pathetic gullible person

  All talk

  Worse than the fool is one of those people who occur in every organization on the planet: the buchipluma (Caribbean Spanish), the person who promises but doesn’t deliver. The same language has a useful verb for the way such people behave: culipanear, which means to look for excuses for not meeting obligations.

  Fibbers

  Even the infuriating buchipluma is surely preferable to the outright liar. And, as Japanese vividly shows, from lying to someone (nimaijita o tsukau, to use two tongues), it’s just a small step to duping (hanage o nuku handy, literally, to pull the hair out of their nostrils) or doublecrossing them (negaeri o utsu, literally, to roll them over while sleeping).

  Salt of the earth

  What a shame that we can’t all be uncomplicatedly good: for example, when you’re acting with meraki (a Greek word) you’re doing something with soul, creativity or love, and putting something of yourself into what you’re doing:

  tubli (Estonian) orderly, strong, capable, hard-working, persistent, productive, setting an example to others, behaving properly or having will power

  ondinnonk (Iroquoian, USA) the soul’s innermost benevolent desires or the angelic parts of human nature

  Indonesian two in one

  Indonesian has many words that combine two aspects of character or appearance into a single simple word. So you might well know someone who is ricuh, that is, chaotic and noisy; pandir, stupid, but innocent and honest; mungil, tiny and pretty; merana, lonely and miserable; lencir, slim and tall; bangkot, old and cantankerous; or klimis, smooth and shiny.

  Tall poppies

  Sweden is a country that not only values the concept of a lack of extremes but even has a word for it – lagom. In this society, it’s generally not thought to be good to stand out too much. Everything and everyone is supposed to be just lagom – which is not to say ‘boring’, so much as ‘not too much and not too little’, ‘not good and not bad’, ‘okay’, ‘just right’, ‘so-so’.

  So so similar

  The concept of ‘so-so’ is found in many languages, and often in a similarly repetitive form: it’s tako tako in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, aixi aixi in Catalan, cosi cosi in Italian, wale wale in Chipewyan (Canada), hanter hanter in Cornish, thik thik in Gujarati (India), hai hao in Mandarin, jako tako in Polish, ithin ithin in Sinhala (Sri Lanka), soyle boyle in Turkish, etsi ketsi in Greek, atal atal in Occitan (France), asina asina in Asturian (Spain), elae belae in Azeri (Azerbaijan) and azoy azoy in Yiddish.

  Happy talk

  Good or bad, modest or conceited, hard-working or lazy, all of us experience the highs of emotion:

  tout baigne dans l´huile (French) hunky-dory (literally, everything is bathing in oil)

  ai bu shishou (Chinese) so delighted with something that one can scarcely take one’s eyes off it

  ichigo-ichie (Japanese) the practice of treasuring each moment and trying to make it perfect

  pulaka (Tulu, India) hair that stands on end with ecstasy

  bas-bhualadh (Scottish Gaelic) clapping one’s hands from joy or grief

  tuman (Indonesian) to find something enjoyable and want to have it again

  mubshar (Persian) to be exhilarated with good news

  zhuxing (Chinese) to add to the fun

  Side-splitting

  sekaseka (Bemba, Congo and Zambia) to laugh without reason

  tergelak (Malay) laughing unintentionally

  katahara itai (Japanese) laughing so much that one side of your abdomen hurts

  Enraptured

  The Japanese have particularly wonderful words for the deep joy that can come as a response to beauty: uttori is to be enraptured by the loveliness of something; aware describes the feelings created by ephemeral beauty; yoin is the reverberating sensation
after the initial stimulus has ceased; while yugen goes further, describing an awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words.

  Down in the dumps

  The causes of unhappiness are many, varied and not always easy to put your finger on:

  termangu-mangu (Indonesian) sad and not sure what to do

  mono-no-aware (Japanese) appreciating the sadness of existence

  avoir le cafard (French) to be down in the dumps (literally, to have the cockroach)

  litost (Czech) the state of torment created by the sudden realization of one’s own misery

  kusat’ sebe lokti (Russian) to cry over spilt milk (literally, to bite one’s elbows)

  emakou (Gilbertese, Kiribati) a secret sorrow

  bel hevi (Tok Pisin, Papua New Guinea) the heavy sinking feeling that often accompanies extreme sadness (literally, belly heavy)

  Weltschmerz

  Weltschmerz is another untranslatable German word. It broadly means world-weariness, but carries with it both a sense of sorrow at the evils of the world and a yearning for something better. Aspects of it can be found in the Welsh hiraeth, a mingled feeling of sadness, somewhere between homesickness and nostalgia, and the Portuguese saudade, the longing for things that were or might have been. Nostalgia also lies at the heart of the Brazilian Portuguese word banzo, which describes a slave’s profound longing for his African homeland.