global wording
some of you know that i will occasionally default into spanish (and ok, sometimes i use a little italian, russian or whatever other language i've learned phrases in). i can't help it. i love learning new words, and i love foreign languages.
this could probably explain the reason, then, that i found the page entitled "global wording: if you can't say it in english, just borrow le mot juste" by adam jacot de boinod from the march 2006 issue of smithsonian magazine so facinating.
in it he tells how albanians have at least 27 words for 'mustache' depending on whether it is bushy or drooping at both ends. he says that we, as americans, have borrowed a lot of words from other languages and made them our own (ad hoc, feng shui, kindergarten, croissant...) but that there are so many good words that we have totally missed. he then goes on to talk about some that he thinks we should consider using.
did you know that in hawaiian "awawa" is the word for the gap between your fingers or toes? or that "waal" in afrikaans is the area behind the knee? in ulwa (nicaragua) "alang" is the fold of skin under the chin.
in tok pisin (spoken in papua new guinea) their word for beard (gras bilong fes) means "grass belonging to the face" and the germans have a word (kummerspeck) for the excess weight one gains from emotional over-eating that literally translates as “grief bacon“.
the czech have a word for "someone who finds it difficult to take a hint" (nedovtipa), and malaysians have a word for "the swishing of long earrings" (kontal-kontil).
the russians don't speak of crying over spilt milk; they say "kusat sebe lokti", which means "to bite one's elbows." which, he says, is better than breaking your heart in japanese (hanawata o tatsu), which translates literally as "to sever one's intestines."
i might just have to check out his book "the meaning of tingo" that comes out next month...
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