No TC arrived this morning and of course no National Post since it's Sunday. However, I have thwared the fates by keeping an old Sunday Telegraph from the Thankgiving holiday that I hadn't completely read. Reading a review about a book called "The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World" by Adam Jacot de Boinod (is on order at GVPL and you can put a hold on it).
Quoted from the review by Aileen Reid:
But mostly what the book offers is the chance to do what everyone around the world enjoys - laughing at funny foreigners, ad confirming stereotypes. Surely only the Dutch could have a word for "to go for a walk in windy weather for fun"(uitwaaien), the Russians a word for a dealer in stolen cats (koshatnik) and the Italians one for "maternal control that extends well into adulthood" (mammismo).
One of the book's greatest pleasures is learning words for things we recognise but for which there is no equivalent in English. Thus the Inuit have "iktsuarpok" meaning "to go outside often to see if someone is coming", and the Czechs "vybafnout" - "to jump out and say boo". And who has not worked with what the Indonesians call a "neko neko - "one who has a creative idea that only makes things worse"?
Perhaps even more diverting are those that we don't recognise. What is it about Hawaii that the natives need a word for "A day spent in nervous anticipation of a coughing spell"?
