Adam Jacot de Boinod has a new book!
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The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World
by Adam Jacot de Boinod
Overview
From the Publisher
A garden of delights for the word obsessed: a funny, amazing, and even profound world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent, the ones that tell us so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations and expand our minds.
Did you know that people in Bolivia have a word that means "I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault"? That there's no Italian equivalent for the word "blue"? That the Dutch word for skimming stones is "plimpplamppletteren"? This delightful book, which draws on the collective wisdom of more than 254 languages, includes not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English ("pana po'o" in Hawaiian means to scratch your head in order to remember something important), but also a frank discussion of exactly how many Eskimo words there are for snow and the longest known palindrome in any language ("saippuakivikauppias"—Finland).
And all right, what in fact is "tingo"? In the Pascuense language of Easter Island, it's to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by asking to borrow them. Well, of course it is. Enhanced by its ingenious and irresistible little Schott's Miscellany/Eats Shoots and Leaves package and piquant black-and-white illustrations throughout, The Meaning of Tingo is a heady feast for word lovers of all persuasions. Viva Tingo!
My thoughts
What can I possibly say about this book that isn't already described in the publisher's summary?! That this book is delightful! That I couldn't put it down! That I laughed out loud!
This book was a Christmas gift to me from someone very special to me, and as soon as I opened it I laughed because this book speaks to me of the laughter we so often share! I thought it was the kind of book that you leave lying around, pick up occasionally, read a couple of pages, then put it down until the next time that you happen to pick it up. I was wrong! It's quite easily read from cover to cover, mostly with furrowed brow, wondering WHY someone thought they needed a word to explain that kind of situation!
Favorite Passage
My most favorite is a Yiddish curse that goes like this: zolst farliren aleh tseyner achitz eynm, un dos zol dir vey ton. What does it mean?
May you lose all your teeth but one and may that one ache!
I also really like the German word: Scheissenbedauern. It describes the disappointment one feels when something turns out not nearly as badly as one hoped.
And finally the Brazilian/Portuguese word: grilagem. It is the old practice of putting a cricket in a box of newly faked documents, until the moving insect's excrement makes the papers look plausibly old and genuine (literally, cricketing).
Do they need to do that a lot in Brazil?!?!?!?
