15 October 2005

tingo!

We've all heard how the eskimos have 26 words for snow, here's a book, The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World (Hardcover)
by Jacot De Boinod, that celebrates the weird and wacky in language. For instance:

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.
nakkele: a man who licks whatever the food has been served on (from Tulu, India).
Kummerspeck: German word which literally means grief bacon: it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.

I want to read this book to find out what word Bolivians have that means "I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault".

1 Comments:

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9:32 pm, October 15, 2005  

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