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| Hearsay: |
An interesting sounding bathroom book that explores words that other languages have that English doesn’t. I used to live with Germans, and they’ve got a word for everything. That sound a wet mouth makes when it chews? That time when the digital clock is displaying three of the same number (ie, 2:22pm)? They’ve got all the bases covered. I still use some of them.
You can understand why no native writer from Chaucer to Doris Lessing has come up with a single word to describe the difficulty of urinating after eating frogs before the rains have fallen. The very concept of “before the rains” is alien to these damp isles.
But you would think, given that most of us do it, that there might be a word to describe the time taken to eat a banana, or a noun to identify a person so miserly that, if a fly falls into his tea, he’ll fish it out and suck it dry before throwing it away.
Adam Jacot de Boinod, a former researcher on Stephen Fry’s BBC2 show Quite Interesting, has trawled dictionaries and websites around the world to produce his second compendium of unlikely but useful words that other languages enjoy but English does not.
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October 30th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Will Ferguson described this book years ago in Generica.
Or Happiness.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:34 pm
A friend and I think there should be a huge compound word in German that describes the sneaking feeling one gets, when in conversation with someone, that s/he’s Googled you.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:11 am
So, Cousin George, what are the German words for the sound a wet mouth makes when it chews, and the time when a digital clock displays three of the same number? Inquiring minds etc.
-Cousin Terry
November 1st, 2007 at 3:17 pm
And did you know that Lady Ninja is “flink” (at least to the Dutch)?