By the Same Author
The Meaning of Tingo
Toujours
Tingo
Illustrations: Sandra Howgate
ALLEN LANE
an imprint of
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published 2007
2
Copyright © Adam Jacot de Boinod, 2007
Illustrations copyright © Sandra Howgate
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-14-191919-5
In memory of my father
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
1. Getting Acquainted
2. The Human Condition
3. Emotional Intelligence
4. Social Animals
5. Having an Argument
6. The Rules of Attraction
7. Family Ties
8. Kids
9. Body Beautiful
10. Dressed to Kill
11. Stretching Your Legs
12. Upping Sticks
13. Home Sweet Home
14. Dinner Time
15. One for the Road
16. All in a Day’s Work
17. Game Theory
18. Animal Magic
19. Climate Change
20. The Root of All Evil
21. The Criminal Life
22. Realpolitik
23. From Better to Hearse
24. The Great Beyond
Foreword
The reception given to my first book, The Meaning of Tingo, was very heartening, and encouraged me to continue to explore the wilder hinterlands of the world’s more unusual words and expressions. I am glad to say my first foray was by no means exhaustive. Looking further into some of the more common languages I found such delights as okuri-okami, the Japanese word for ‘a man who feigns thoughtfulness by offering to see a girl home only to try to molest her once he gets in the door’ (literally, a see-you-home wolf); kaelling, the Danish for ‘a woman who stands on the steps of her house yelling obscenities at her kids’; and belochnik, the Russian for ‘a thief specializing in stealing linen off clothes lines’ (an activity that was supposedly very lucrative in the early 1980s).
And how could I have missed the German Kiebitz, ‘an onlooker at a card game who interferes with unwanted advice’ or the Portuguese pesamenteiro, ‘one who habitually joins groups of mourners at the home of a deceased person, ostensibly to offer condolences but in reality to partake of the refreshments which he expects will be served’?
In this second volume I’ve ventured too into over a hundred new languages with African and Native American tongues scoring high with the surprising and delightful definitions. The Ndebele of Southern Africa have the word dii-koyna, meaning ‘to destroy one’s own property in anger’, an impulse surely felt by most of us at some time or another, if not acted upon. From the Bakweri language of Cameroon we have wo-mba, a charming word to describe ‘the smiling in sleep by children’; and from the Buli language of Ghana the verb pelinti, ‘to move very hot food around inside one’s mouth to avoid too close a contact’. And doubtless there are many among us who have found themselves disturbed by a butika roka (Gilbertese, Oceania), ‘a brother-in-law coming around too often’.
Once again, of course, many of the more unusual words relate closely to the local specifics of their cultures. Most of us are unlikely to need the verb sendula (from the Mambwe of Zambia), meaning ‘to find accidentally a dead animal in the forest’, which carries with it the secondary sense ‘and be excited at the thought that a lion or leopard could still be around’; the bizarre noun mmbwe, from the Venda of South Africa, which describes ‘a round pebble taken from a crocodile’s stomach and swallowed by a chief’ (which can hardly be an everyday occurrence); or the wonderful and unlikely biritululo, from the Kiriwani of Papua New Guinea, meaning ‘comparing yams to settle a dispute’. But even if we never have the call to use such expressions, it’s surely enriching to know that in Malay pisan zapra is ‘the time needed to eat a banana’; in Finnish, poronkusema is ‘the distance equal to how far a reindeer can travel without a comfort break’; while manàntsona, from the Malagasy of Madagascar, is ‘to smell or sniff before entering a house, as a dog does’.
We may not share the same climate, but we can all too easily imagine the use of words like hanyauku (Rukwangali, Namibia), ‘to walk on tiptoe on warm sand’, barbaran-on (Ik, Nilo-Saharan), ‘to sit in a group of people warming up in the morning sun’, or dynke (Norwegian), ‘the act of dunking somebody’s face in snow’.
Despite our differing circumstances, the words once again reveal that the commonality of human experience remains strong. Most of us know a poyipoyi (Tsonga, South Africa), ‘a person who talks at length but does not make sense’, or a mutakarrim (Persian), ‘one who makes pretensions to generosity’, if not a kanjus makkhichus (Hindi), ‘a person so miserly that if a fly falls into his cup of tea, he’ll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away’. And we’ve surely all observed in our friends and colleagues chovochovo (Luvale, Zambia), ‘the tendency to carry on talking after others have stopped’, not to mention napleiten (Dutch), ‘to discuss might-have-been, go over old ground again, keep on arguing after a thing has been decided’. And anyone who’s ever tried to manage people will have tried digdig (Manobo, Philippines), ‘to praise someone for the quality he lacks in order to encourage him to develop that quality’.
There must be buses on every route in the world where one can spot a tyčovka (Czech), ‘a woman who hangs on to the pole next to the bus driver and chats him up’. On Wall Street, American financiers would understand the verb iwaktehda, from the Dakotan language of one of their own native peoples, meaning ‘to go home in triumph having taken scalps’. And even in the most sophisticated societies there will be plenty who have, at one time or another, experienced the equivalent of the Tsongan rhwe, ‘to sleep on the floor without a mat and usually drunk and naked’.
Half as long again as The Meaning of Tingo, this second bite into the substantial cherry of world languages has allowed me to venture in depth into all sorts of new areas. There are more exa
mples of ‘false friends’, from the Czech word host, which confusingly means ‘guest’, to the Estonian sober, a perhaps unlikely word for ‘a male friend’. There are the intriguing meanings of the names of cities and countries, palindromes and even national anthems, as well as a series of worldwide idioms, which join the words in confirming that the challenges, joys and disappointments of human existence are all too similar around the globe. The admonitory ‘Don’t count your chickens’ of English, for example, is echoed in most languages, becoming, in Danish, man skal ikke sælge skindet, før bjørnen er skudt, ‘one should not sell the fur before the bear has been shot’; in Turkish, dereyi görmeden paçalari sivama, ‘don’t roll up your trouser legs before you see the stream’; and in the Ndonga language of Namibia, ino manga ondjupa ongombe inaayi vala, ‘don’t hang the churning calabash before the cow has calved’.
At a time when the march of English continues relentlessly through the ever more globalized world, I can only hope to encourage the survival of some of these rare and wonderful languages, which are tragically becoming extinct at the rate of one a fortnight, taking with them such charming and useful concepts as a’ matiti (Rotuman, South Pacific), ‘to accustom a baby to cooler temperatures by taking it on a walk in the early morning’, pikikiwepogosi (Obijway, North America), ‘having the taste of an animal that was tired out before it was killed’ and chaponner (Gallo, France), ‘to stick a finger up a chicken’s bottom to see if it is laying an egg’.
English is of course a great language, but we shouldn’t be surprised that there are many others too. So let’s celebrate the many varieties of women described by the Japanese, from the kakobijin, ‘the sort of woman who talks incessantly about how she would have been thought of as a stunner if she had lived in a different era, when men’s tastes were different’ (literally, bygone beauty) to the nittoonna, the ‘woman so dedicated to her career that she has no time to iron blouses and so resorts to dressing only in knitted tops’; and relish the precision with which the Germans observe the comings and goings in the relationship circus, from the Lückenfüller, ‘the person one dates between two serious relationships’ (literally, hole-filler) to the Trennungsagentur, ‘a man hired by women to break the news to their men that they are dumped’ (literally, separation agent).
Further afield, we can only sympathize with the poor gagung (Cantonese), ‘a man without a woman owing to the inequality of the gender ratio after the One Child policy’ (literally, bare branches); try to understand oka/shete (Ndonga, Namibia), ‘urination difficulties caused by eating frogs before the rain has duly fallen’; cherish the thought of the echafoureré (Gallo, France), ‘tickled cat hiding under the table or chair’; and be impressed by gintawan (Manobo, Philippines), ‘the energy and industry of the first wife (when her husband takes an additional wife) as a result of the competition from the second wife’.
I can only hope that if this book doesn’t make you elmosolyodik (Hungarian), ‘break into a smile’, or bring on an attack of latterkrampe (Norwegian), ‘convulsive laughter’, it doesn’t reduce you to gegemena (Rukwangali, Namibia), ‘muttering while sobbing’ or even make you jera (Indonesian), ‘so scared by a past experience that one will never want to do it again’.
Adam Jacot de Boinod
Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to the following people for their advice and help: Giles Andreae, Suzy Barry, Karen Coster, Caroline Harris, Dr Muge Kinacioglu, Pierre-Yves Kohler, Therese Larsson, Kate Lawson, Sarah McDougall, Zahra Naderi, Karen Naundorf, James Nixey, Vicky Rigby, Mary and Gordon Snow, Sion Williams and Anette Wilms; and as well many of the professors at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and staff at the BBC World Service.
In particular I must thank my illustrator, Sandra Howgate, my agent, Peter Straus, my excellent editor at Penguin, Georgina Laycock; and once again my collaborator, Mark McCrum, for his fine work on the text.
1.
Getting Acquainted
bie shi rongyi; jian shi nan (Chinese)
parting is easy but meeting is difficult
Hamjambo
However good or bad we’re feeling inside, we still have to communicate with each other. We come out of our front door, see someone and adopt the public face. ‘How are you?’ ‘Awright, mate?’ we ask at home. Abroad, greetings seem somehow more exotic:
stonko?
Muskogee (Oklahoma and Florida, USA)
ah chop?
Aramaic (Maaloula, Syria)
oli?
Koyo (Congo)
hamjambo?
Kiswahili (South East Africa)
‘Fine, thanks!’ we reply. They say:
bare bra
Norwegian
dagu dad
Adyghe (North Caucasus, Russia)
bash
Kurdi (Iran, Iraq)
How is your nose?
The Onge of the Andaman Islands don’t ask ‘How are you?’ but ‘How is your nose?’ The correct response is to reply that you are ‘heavy with odour’. Around the world there are numerous other ways to meet and greet:
cead mile failte (Irish) one hundred thousand welcomes
añjalikā (Pali, India) the raising of the hands as a sign of greeting
inga i moana (Gilbertese, Oceania) to greet with open arms but soon tire of
er-kas (Pahlavi, Iran) hands under the armpits in respectful salutation
abruzo (Latin American Spanish) the strong hug men give each other whenever they meet
lamuka usalali (Mambwe, Zambia) to greet somebody lying down on one’s back (a salute generally given to chiefs)
‘And this is…’
The Scots have a useful word, tartle, which means to hesitate in recognizing a person or thing, as happens when you are introducing someone whose name you can’t quite remember. They are not the only ones to suffer from this infuriating problem:
ciniweno (Bemba, Zambia) a thing, the name of which one does not remember
joca (Portuguese) thingumajig, thingumabob
Tongue-tied
That little dilemma solved, not everyone finds it easy to continue:
vóvôhetâhtsenáotse (Cheyenne, USA) to prepare the mouth before speaking (for example, by moving or licking one’s lips)
dabodela (Malagasy, Madagascar) one in the habit of opening his mouth so as to show his tongue projecting and rolling a little beyond the teeth, and yet not able to speak
bunhan bunahan (Boro, India) to be about to speak and about not to speak
Chatterbox
With others you sometimes wish they found self-expression harder:
láu táu (Vietnamese) to talk fast and thoughtlessly
hablar hasta por los codos (Spanish) to talk non-stop (literally, to talk even through the elbows)
mae hi’n siarad fel melin bupur (Welsh) she talks non-stop (literally, she talks like a pepper mill)
hinikiza (Swahili) to out-talk a person by making a noise
kumoo musu baa (Mandinka, West Africa) to jump into a conversation without knowing the background
nudnyi (Russian) someone who, when asked how they are, tells you in detail
chovochovo (Luvale, Zambia) the tendency to carry on talking after others have stopped
gnagsår i ørene (Norwegian) blisters in your ears: what someone who talks a lot gives you
What’s in a name?
First impressions are important, particularly to the people visiting a place for the first time. The name of the Canary Islands (Islands of the
Dogs) derives from the wild dogs (canes) that barked savagely at the Romans when they first arrived on Gran Canaria.
Cities
Cuzco (Quechuan, Andes) navel of the earth
Khartoum (Arabic) elephant’s trunk
Topeka, Kansas (Sioux Indian) a good place to grow potatoes
Countries
Anguilla: from the Spanish for eel, so named by Columbus
due to its elongated shape
Cameroon: from the Portuguese Rio de Camarőes, River of
Shrimps
Faroe Islands: from the Faroese Føroyar, Sheep Islands
Barbados: from the name Os Barbados, the Bearded Ones:
the island’s fig trees sported long roots resembling beards
Keeping in touch
Advances in technology have ensured that we are always on call, but whether that improves the quality of our lives is somewhat debatable:
yuppienalle (Swedish) a mobile phone (literally, yuppie teddy: as they were like security blankets for yuppies when they first came out)
proverka sloukha (Russian) an expression used in telephone conversations, meaning ‘I have nothing special to say – I just called to say hello’ (literally, a hearing test)
telebabad (Tagalog, Philippines) talking on the phone for a long time
prozvonit (Czech and Slovak) to call someone’s mobile from your own to leave your number in their phone’s memory, without the intention of the other person picking up
Tower of Babble
Not that we should ever take communication of any kind for granted. At whatever pace, misunderstandings are all too easy: