The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World [Hardcover]

A book no well-stocked bookshelf, cistern-top or handbag should be without.

'The Meaning of Tingo' may well prove to be the must-have British stocking-filler for 2005

...compulsively perusable

...destined to be the Eats, Shoots and Leaves of the autumn.

...a pleasure to dip in to.

I liked the inventiveness of the Spanish curse "may all your turkey's feathers turn into razor blades"

...a luscious list of linguistic one-liners

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? Or that the Albanians have twenty-seven words for moustache? Or that the Dutch word for skimming stones is plimpplamppletteren? Drawing on the collective wisdom of over 280 languages, this intriguing book is arranged by theme so that you can compare attitudes all over the world to such subjects as food, the human body and the battle of the sexes. Here, you can find not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English (such as pana po'o in Hawaiian - to scratch your head in order to remember something important), but also those that sound confusingly the same (gin in Turkish means to dry out). Oh, and tingo is a Pascuense word from the Easter Islands meaning to borrow things from a friend's house one by one until there's nothing left .

Many English speakers admit to being lazy both at home and when travelling in their reliance on English as the pre-eminent international language and I feel that in this multi-cultural age we live in we should embrace the joy, glory and wonder of foreign words and expressions. English is unquestionably a great language but I suppose what I am saying is ³don¹t be surprised there are many others.²

Explore the weird and wonderful world of words, including:

Papua New Guinea - where beards are grass on the face
Vietnam - where there are eighteen different words for you
Saudi Arabia - where a biro is an office
Hungary - where pigs go röf-röf-röf
Italy - where re-heated cabbage can be romantic
France - where slang is green
Japan - where a snail's pace is an ox’s walk
Holland - where an angel is something to be avoided
Germany - where hell is a beautiful thing
Finland - where you’ll find the longest palindromic word in any language
India - where puti is a bearded lady

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’?
Or that the Albanians have twenty-seven words for moustache?
Or that the Dutch word for skimming stones is plimpplamppletteren?

Drawing on the collective wisdom of over 280 languages, this intriguing book is arranged by theme so that you can compare attitudes all over the world to such subjects as food, the human body and the battle of the sexes. Here you can find not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English (such as pana po’o in Hawaiian - to scratch your head in order to remember something important), but also those that sound confusingly the same (gin in Turkish means to dry out). Oh, and tingo is a Pascuense word from the Easter Islands meaning ‘to borrow things from a friend’s house one by one until there’s nothing left’ .

Adam Jacot de Boinod's interest in foreign languages was first aroused when doing research for the BBC programme QI and subsequently developed into a full-on vokabulyu (Russian - passion for foreign words). While searching through 280 dictionaries, 140 websites and numerous books on language, he developed an undoubted samlermani (Danish- mania for collecting), became close to being fisselig (German - flustered to the point of incompetence) and narrowly avoided karoshi (Japanese - death from overwork). He is now intending to nglayap (Indonesian - wander far from home with no particular purpose).