Feedback

I’ve been enjoying the feedback to my posts on the website. How great to discover from Anonymous (one of many) that Age-otori really does exist in Japanese. ‘Formally styling one’s hair for a coming of age ceremony, with the contrary effect of making oneself look worse than before’. If I ever get to do an updated Meaning of Tingo, that’s definitely going in.
Some other great words and expressions, too. Thanks mediaspiv for cigerimin kosesinden, ‘to love someone from the corner of your liver’. Much more expressive than boring old English ‘from the bottom of your heart’.
And I absolutely love ariga-meiwaku, ‘an act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favour, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude’. I’ve been there.
Some posts, though, seem a touch on the critical side. I would say to Anonymous of Sept 26th who tells me I’m ‘sloppy’ that the whole point about the aranjear post was that the word didn’t make it into the book precisely because I couldn’t verify it. And now, thanks to A. Gwilliam, I know that the word anaranjear means ‘to throw oranges at someone’, which is not quite as good as ‘to kill a cockerel by throwing oranges at it’ but almost. Maybe in some savage corner of the Spanish-speaking world the verb does indeed mean that.
As for the other criticisms, it might interest Dutch-speakers who’ve never heard of Plimpplamppletteren to read the article at http://www.percepp.demon.co.uk/pfol5th.htm where expressive words in many languages are discussed. By the same token, I’m sorry to have to disagree with Monsieur Mallah, but Seigneur-terrace, ‘a person who spends much time but little money in a café’ appears in Barron's Dictionary of French Slang and Other Colloquial Expressions. As far as the 27 words for Albanian moustaches and eyebrows are concerned, I appreciate that the words are formed by adjectives attached to the noun mustaqe, but in my 1100 page Albanian-English dictionary they are listed in a group as specifically descriptive of moustaches …
And so on. Believe me, I didn’t make these words up…

In Praise of Slang

How can you define a language? Many like to take their cue from a trusted dictionary. If it ain't in, it's not a word. But the richest source of words is often spoken language. Words used by particular groups of people can tell us a lot about their habits and customs - but they might not be the officially sanctioned version of the language. Think of vibrant urban English, where the phrase 'to be bling' means to accessorise in a flamboyant way, to show off your wealth and style. In France 'Verlan' slang has thrown up a number of quirky words, used mainly by young people in and around Paris. The idea here is to put the sounds of the word back to front - thus 'laisse tomber' (let it drop, forget it), becomes 'laisse beton' - and 'beton' aside from being 'tomber' back to front, is the word for concrete! Very appropriate.

Scheissenbedauern

Words from other languages can articulate thoughts that may have been on the tip of our tongues, or even right at the back of the brain. Neko-neko, for example, the Indonesian for ‘one who has a creative idea that only makes things worse’. I’ve worked with more than a few of those over the years. Sometimes the very existence of a word brings a sense of relief (god they’ve thought that too!) Ataoso, for example, Central American Spanish for ‘one who sees problems with everything’. I have at least one of them in my own life, naming no names.

And as for those German ‘portmanteau’ words. My favourite in the book is Scheissenbedauern, ‘the disappointment one feels when something turns out not nearly as badly as one had expected’. You have to think: what kind of a mind first came up with that? And when? Returning from the surprisingly enjoyable wedding of an ex? Or did the word originally relate to a work-project?