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I came across this in an article in the Telegraph (UK) this Saturday. I simply HAVE to get this when it hits the shelves! (Penguin Books, ISBN 0140515615 )
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You know when you've been Tingoed - just ask an Easter Islander
By Neil Tweedie
(Filed: 24/09/2005)
Ever been disappointed when something turns out better than you expected? Lots of Germans have because they invented a word for it: scheissenbedauern.
Or owned a camel that gives milk only when tickled on the nostrils? Nakhurs, they call them in Iran.
Or dealt with a koshatnik - Russian for a seller of stolen cats?
English prides itself on a wealth of words describing almost the same thing, and the precision it brings. But, as a new book shows, other languages contain words with no direct English equivalent that do the job of whole sentences in the Anglo-Saxon world, and which describe the strangest jobs, emotions and practices.
The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod draws its title from the Pascuense language of Easter Island - tingo meaning to borrow objects one by one from a friend's house until nothing is left.
Beware the new neighbour who pops round for a cup of sugar. It could be the start of tingo. Mr Jacot de Boinod stumbled across some of his words while researching for the BBC comedy quiz show QI.
There may be English women who appear better from behind than the front, but only the Japanese have a word for such a looker: bakku-shan.
And in neko-neko the Indonesians have devised a noun for that indispensable member of the office: the person whose creative idea only makes things worse. The Inuit, meanwhile, rely on areodjarekput, the practice of exchanging wives for a few days, to combat the monotony of the long arctic night.
The internet, foreign language dictionaries and even embassies provided the words. "English is brilliant at naturalising foreign words, such as ad hoc or feng shui," said Mr Jacot de Boinod. "I'd like to see some of my favourites from the book in general use."
Everyone has heard of the Inuit having dozens or even hundreds of words for snow, but who would suspect the Albanians of having 27 different words for eyebrow, and 27 for moustache.
There are also a number of dubious compliments, including mahj - Persian for looking beautiful after a disease - and the wonderful Italian word for one tanned by sun lamp, slampadato.
The Russians, who excel in the art of misery, offer razbliuto for the feeling one has for a former lover no longer loved.
And it is only natural that the fearsomely industrious Japanese risk karoshi, death from overwork.
Mr Jacot de Boinod said: "A frustration has been finding wonderful words that I have been unable to verify and so had to leave out of the book. Age-otori for example - a Japanese word supposedly meaning 'to look worse after a haircut'.
"Even though I found it on a website the Japanese speakers I consulted didn't think it existed, and I couldn't track it down in any dictionaries. So out it went."
Some other unusual words and their meanings discovered by Mr Jacot de Boinod: marilopotes (Ancient Greek), a gulper of coaldust; cigerci (Turkish), a seller of liver and lungs; madogiwazoku (Japanese), window-gazing office workers with too little to do; seigneur-terrasse (French), a person who spends much time but little money in a cafe; tuji-giri (Japanese), the practice of trying out your new sword on a passer-by; torschlusspanik (German), fear of diminishing opportunities due to advancing age.
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This looks like advertising.
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Ever been disappointed when something turns out better than you expected? Lots of Germans have because they invented a word for it: scheissenbedauern.
Oh, no, not one of these books again. Googling scheißenbedauern or scheissenbedauern only returns pages in English. If it's so popular with Germans why aren't they using it online? Besides most of those pages attribute the word coinage to a humorist Joe Queenan who wrote: Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon. Lower down in the article, Inuit snow vocabulary is mentioned uncritically.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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...the whole Board this time! Some other unusual words and their meanings discovered by Mr Jacot de Boinod: ... torschlusspanik (German), fear of diminishing opportunities due to advancing age.We've discussed this one here, a while ago and maybe even recently. Edit: here: http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=german&Number=87692 et seq...
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In reply to:
And in neko-neko the Indonesians have devised a noun for that indispensable member of the office: the person whose creative idea only makes things worse.
Errr, no. Firstly neko-neko is actually Javanese, not Indonesian. Secondly it doesn't mean that. It seems to be the Javanese equivalent of macam-macam, which can mean "various kinds of" or "muck somebody about, try it on with somebody".
Bingley
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Pooh-Bah
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Ever been delighted when something turns out more disappointing than expected? This has been a delicious thread.
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tuji-giri (Japanese), the practice of trying out your new sword on a passer-by
Oh, I would love this word to be true, as such a thing takes place in one scene of "Zatoichi"!
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Pooh-Bah
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>>I woud love it to be true<<
I don't know about the word, but such a thing did was in-fact, the practice -- although I think the "passer-by" was a slave.
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Some Japanese Samurai, during the Edo Period, randomly tested their swords by hacking up people of lower social station. The practice was called tsuji-giri. The clans combined to prohibit the practice through a law called Hyakkajou.
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" Some Japanese Samurai, during the Edo Period, randomly tested their swords by hacking up people of lower social station.
The practice was called tsuji-giri. The clans combined to prohibit the practice through a law called Hyakkajou." I'll bet you a dram of saki, Father Steve, that there has been no groundswell movement by the people of Japan to rescind the law of "Hyakkajou". But, one day, who knows? It seems to me that all people, not just intact Japanese, are becoming odder. 
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Goodness gracious, Stuart--it only just now dawned on me that you are not, in fact, the personal friend I'd thought you were!  My mind just made the leap, with me all unawares!  Welcome aBoard! Neat thread!
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Some Japanese Samurai, during the Edo Period, randomly tested their swords by hacking up people of lower social station. The practice was called tsuji-giri.
That seems particularly gruesome to me. The thought will haunt me I know.
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>The thought will haunt me I know.
As it will all the others who didn't make the cut.
TEd
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Here we have wordplay and fun, there they have swordplay and fun. What's the difference?
Bingley
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Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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From the posting: My guess is that de Boinod relied on an online Malay-English Dictionary that inaccurately translates gigi rongak as "gap between teeth."
As an aside, the reliance on sketchy online dictionaries and wordlists can yield unintentionally humorous results. Take, for instance, the Maserati Kubang. Unveiled in 2003, this "concept car" is supposedly named after "a wind over Java." (Maserati has a tradition of naming cars after exotic-sounding winds.) Close, but no cigar — the actual word is kumbang, not kubang. ... this got mangled on various websites listing winds of the world ..., and kumbang was changed to kubang. What does kubang mean in Indonesian? "Mudhole, mud puddle, quagmire." Probably not the image Maserati was going for!
Sounds like this book could be a good companion to "English As She Is Spoke"!
Thanks, zmjezhd.
Hey, tsuwm--didja read the first thing the guy from the Netherlands wrote about?
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>didja read the first thing the guy from the Netherlands wrote about?
about the fatuous word for 'stone-skimming'? but we all know this is called dapping in English.
-the wwftd (ouch, I strained my shoulder) master
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Pooh-Bah
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Do you remember the word for a still part of a moving body of water?
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>Do you remember the word for a still part of a moving body of water?
no; I don't even recall hearing of a word for such a concept -- but I'd happily use it if someone else knows it!
-twm
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I see you no longer have this in your profile. How I wondered, at first!
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stranger
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Ever been disappointed when something turns out better than you expected? Lots of Germans have because they invented a word for it: scheissenbedauern.
Unlike Torschlusspanik or Schadenfreude 'scheissenbedauern' is not a word coined by Germans but the invention of an American writer. Hence I don't think it should be in 'You know when you've been Tingoed ',a book on curious foreign words. Although I am German, the first time I came across this word was in the 'books and arts' section of The Economist - and, shocked by my seeming lack of mother tongue, instantly googled it to end up on this page.
We Germans love our compound nouns (like those two mentioned above) but a compound verb (scheissenbedauern = to shit + to regret) sounds very awkward to our ears. So if you want to help us Germans to enrich our language, try to stick to the compound nouns but don't experiment with compound verbs. Or else it would be scheissenbedauerning!
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Welcome, Germanist. Hope you find other discussions here interesting enough to stick around and join in. For what it's worth, I think every contributor here has felt that slightly disconcerting sense of alienation from their mother tongue at some point - even if we can't always agree on such a clear cut reason as in this example you quote. I agree - this book seems like a spurious trawl through secondary source material, just in order to find sensational sounding cases of strange language.
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Pooh-Bah
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Yes, welcome!
Anyway, how would "scheissenbedauern" possibly have that definition? The book is difinitely poo-baz.
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I've *really been tingoed: Dear Webmaster -
I have recently set up my own website at www.themeaningoftingo.com devoted to quirky and amusing language and wondered if you would be interested in exchanging links? If you could send a simple response to this message confirming your url and a suitable title for the link, I will place the link on my website. I would of course appreciate a reciprical arrangement with a link to http://www.themeaningoftingo.com called The Meaning of Tingo. Many thanks
Adam Jacot de Boinod
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Yes, I got the same spam in my bloggy email inbox.
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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Quote:
Yes, I got the same spam in my bloggy email inbox.
Yep, me too. I replied that I would consider it if Quote:
you can answer the concern about the quality of scholarship in your book, concerns raised at http://www.languagehat.com/archives/002105.php and
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002500.html
His less than convincing reply (which I was surprised to receive at all) was:
Quote:
I do not claim to be above criticism and may be some of it is fair but I cn assure you my sources were as authoritative as one can imagine and what is printed in a large dictionary can sometimes vary from people's usage I hope this quell's any fears you have
(sic)
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Quote:
… quell's …
Quell's?!?!?!
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Quote:
Quote:
… quell's …
Quell's?!?!?!
The reason for my "sic".
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Pooh-Bah
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Quote:
This looks like advertising.<br><br>
Yep, Bel, think you pegged it: the lot of us got spammed right here in the tin.
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... spammed right here in the tin.
Heh, heh, heh.
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Not just quell's fears but does so reciprically as well...
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