The world's weird and wonderful vocabularyJohn Walsh
‘The Greeks had a word for it,” we used to say, when stumped for the precise way to describe something. Now, thanks to Adam Jacot de Boinod and his collection of bizarre foreign words, we discover that the Malays, Hawaiians and Sumatrans had, and still have, words for it too.
There is a word for the fold of skin under your chin (alang – it’s Nicaraguan). There is a word for the ring you put in the nose of a calf to stop it suckling its mother (oorxax, from the Khakas region of Siberia).
There is, thank God, a word that sums up that annoying thing you do when your taxi is 20 minutes late and you’re too restless to wait for the doorbell to ring. It’s iktsuarpok – “to go outside often to see if someone is coming”.
Learning a foreign language is the fastest track to becoming familiar with other cultures. But the words themselves offer hundreds of revealing clues to the preoccupations of that culture.
Adam Jacot de Boinod first became entranced by language when he discovered 27 words for “moustache” in an Albanian dictionary – and another 27 for “eyebrows”.A world of bushy machismo sprang to life before his eyes.
He began hanging out in second-hand bookshops, looking for foreign dictionaries. He made lists of his favourite “words with no equivalent in the English language” – like, say, tsuji-giri, a Japanese word from samurai days meaning, “to try out a new sword on a passer-by”, or the stoic German term Torschlusspanik,meaning “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older”.
His book is destined to be the Eats, Shoots & Leaves of the Christmas season. Where else could you discover the gradations of bowing in Japan, from eshaku (a slight bow of about 15°) to pekopeko, “bowing one’s head repeatedly in a fawning or grovelling manner”?
Or find that there are 18 words for “you” in Vietnamese, depending on who you are addressing. Or learn that the French invented the word ordinateur in order not to have to say “computer”, because con is slang for vagina and pute slang for whore, the combination of which is literally unspeakable in haunts of the chivalrous.
Most intriguing of all are the words whose meanings seem ludicrously over-precise – like the Persian word nakhur, which means “a camel that won’t give milk until her nostrils have been tickled”, or the meaning of tingo itself.
These are more than funny foreign words; they are windows into the way other people live.
We may be amused by their lexicon of everyday words – but we can be certain they’d be equally amused by our vocabulary of “multi-tasking” or “soundbite”.
By our unguarded linguistic displays shall we be known.
THE BODY
MATA EGO(Rapa Nui, Easter Island): Eyes that reveal that someone has been crying.
NYLENTIK (Indonesian): To flick someone with the middle finger on the ear.
KUCIR (Indonesian): A tuft of hair left to grow on top of an otherwise bald head.
DIDIS (Indonesian): To search and pick up lice from one’s own hair, usually when in bed at night.
PANA PO’O (Hawaiian): To scratch your head in order to help you to remember something you’ve forgotten.
NGAOBERA (Pascuense, Easter Island): A slight inflammation of the throat caused by screaming too much.
O KA LA NOKONOKO (Hawaiian): A day spent in nervous anticipation of a coughing spell.
PAPAKATA (Cook Islands, Maori): To have one leg shorter than the other.
AKA’AKA’A (Hawaiian): Skin peeling or falling off after either sunburn or heavy drinking.
KARELU (Tulu, Indian): The mark left on the skin by wearing anything tight.
LOVE AND BEAUTY
MAHJ (Persian); Looking beautiful after having a disease.
ZHENGRONG (Chinese): To improve one’s looks by plastic surgery.
BAKKU-SHAN (Japanese): A girl who looks as though she might be pretty when seen from behind, but isn’t when seen from the front.
MAMIHLAPINATAPEI (Fuengian language, Chile): A shared look of longing between parties who are both interested yet neither is willing to make the first move.
POMICIONE (Italian): A man who seizes any chance of being in close physical contact with a woman.
QUEESTING (Dutch): Allowing a lover access to one’s bed, under the covers, for a chit chat.
GHALIDAN (Persian): Tumbling or rolling from side to side as lovers do.
NARACHASTRA PRAYOGA (Sanskrit): Men who worship their own sexual organs.
KORO (Japanese): The hysterical belief that one’s penis is shrinking into one’s body.
SENZURI (Japanese): Male masturbation (literally “a hundred rubs”). “Shiko shiko manzuri” is the female version (literally “ten thousand rubs”).
SACANAGEM (Brazilian,Portuguese): Openly seeking sexual pleasure with one or more partners other than one’s primary partner during Mardi Gras.
ALGHUNJAR (Persian); Feigned anger of a mistress.
WORKING LIFE
KUALANAPUHI (Hawaiian); An officer who keeps the flies off the sleeping king by waving a feather brush.
KOSHATNIK (Russian); A dealer in stolen cats.
BUZ-BAZ (Ancient Persian): A showman who makes a goat and a monkey dance together.
CAPOCLAQUE (Italian); Someone who co-ordinates a group of clappers.
FYRASSISTENT (Danish: An assistant lighthouse keeper.
LOMILOMI (Hawaiian); The chief ’s masseur, whose duty it was to take care of his spittle and excrement.
FUCHA(Portuguese): To use company time and resources for one’s own purposes.
PAUKIKAPE (Ancient Greek): The collar worn by slaves while grinding corn, in order to stop them eating it.
QIANG JINGTOU (Chinese): The fight by a cameraman
to get a better vantage point.
GRILAGEM(Brazilian Portuguese): The practice of putting a live cricket into a box of newly faked documents, until the insect’s excrement makes the paper look convincingly old.
DHURNA(Anglo-Indian): Extorting payment from someone by sitting at their front door and staying there without food, threatening violence, until you get paid.
ZECHPRELLER (German): A person who leaves a restaurant without paying.
TINGO(Pascuense language, Easter Island): Borrowing things from a friend’s house, one by one, until he has nothing left.
CRIME
PUKAU (Malay): A charm used by burglars to make people fall asleep.
REJAM(Malay): To execute by pressing into mud.
WAR NAM NIHADAN (Persian): To murder somebody, bury their body, then grow some flowers over the grave in order to hide it.
SQUADRETTA(Italian): A group of prison guards who specialise in beating up inmates.
CHAT
LATAH (Indonesian): Uncontrollable habit of saying embarrassing things.
CHENYIN (Chinese): Muttering to oneself.
‘A’AMA (Hawaiian): Someone who speaks rapidly, hiding their meaning from one person while communicating it to another.
HEARING THINGS
YUYURUNGUL (Yindiny, Australia): The noise of a snake sliding through grass.
XIAOXIAO (Chinese): The whistling and patter of rain or wind.
GULUGULU (Tulu, India): The sound of a pitcher filling with water.
CALACALA (Tulu, India): The action of children wading through water as they play.
NING-NONG (Indonesia): The ringing of a doorbell.
DESUS (Indonesia): The quiet, smooth sound of somebody farting but not very loudly.
KUSUKUSU (Japanese): The suppressed giggling and tittering of a group of women.
FAAMITI (Samoan): To make a squeaking noise by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or a child.
GHIQQ(Persian): The sound of a boiling kettle.
KERTEK (Malay): The sound of dry leaves or twigs being trodden underfoot.
# Extracted from The Meaning of Tingo by Adam
Jacot de Boinod (Penguin Press) – The Independent
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