gurfa (Arabic) the amount of water scooped up in one hand
tegok (Malay) the water one can swallow at a gulp
qamus (Persian) [a well] so abundant in water that the bucket disappears
yewh-ma (Wagiman, Australia) to scrape out a hole in the sand to collect fresh water
jabh (Persian) arriving at a well and finding no water
Bakbuk bakbuk bakbuk
Like the English expression ‘glug glug glug’, the Hebrew word for bottle, bakbuk, derives from the sound of liquid being poured from it.
Pythons and sponges
Those who have not experienced sgriob (Scottish Gaelic), the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky, may have suffered from olfrygt (Viking Danish), the fear of a lack of ale. And it’s not always a fish the world drinks like:
beber como uma esponja (Portuguese) to drink like a sponge
uwabami no yo ni nomu (Japanese) to drink like a python
geiin suru (Japanese) to drink like a whale
bjor-reifr (Old Icelandic) cheerful from beer-drinking
sternhagelvoll (German) completely drunk (literally, full of stars and hail)
Plastered
To the sober, it’s always intriguing to see what drunken people are convinced they can do when under the influence, such as trying to walk in a straight line (kanale’o in Hawaiian). Perhaps it’s best to bear in mind the Romanian proverb dacă doi spun că eşti beat, du-te şi te culcă, if two people say you’re drunk, go to sleep.
The morning after
at have tømmermaend (Danish) having a hangover (literally, to have carpenters, i.e. hearing the noise of drilling, sawing, etc.)
Katzenjammer (German) a very severe hangover (literally, the noise made by extremely miserable cats)
A useful excuse
As they say in Aymara (Bolivia and Peru), umjayanipxitütuwa –they must have made me drink.
On reflection
Doormat dandy
Languages are full of traps for the unwary, particularly when it comes to words that sound similar but mean very different things:
Spanish: el papa the Pope; la papa potato
Albanian: cubar ladies’ man, womanizer; cube proud, courageous girl
Kerja, Indonesia: aderana prostitute; aderòna perfume Italian: zerbino doormat; zerbinotto dandy
Arabic: khadij premature child; khidaj abortion
Albanian: shoq husband; shog bald man; shop blockhead
Below Par
u miericu pietusu fa la piaga verminusa (Calabrian, Italy)
the physician with too much pity will cause the wound to fester
Ouch!
The exclamation denoting pain has many varieties. If you touch a boiling kettle in Korea you cry aiya, in the Philippines aruy and in France aïe. In Russian you scream oj, in Danish uh and in German aua.
Atishoo!
In Japan one sneeze signifies praise (ichi home); two sneezes, criticism (ni-kusashi); three sneezes, disparagement (san-kenashi),
while four or more sneezes are taken to mean, quite reasonably, that a cold is on its way (yottsu-ijo wa kaze no moto). Meanwhile, in Mexico, one sneeze is answered with the word salud (health); two sneezes with dinero (money); three sneezes with amor (love); four or more sneezes with alergías (allergies); laughter often accompanies four sneezes, because health, money and love are obviously more desirable than allergies.
Bless you!
In response to someone sneezing, the Germans say Gesundheit, ‘health to you’, and the French à tes souhaits, literally, ‘to your wishes’. In Sierre Leone, Mende speakers say biseh, or ‘thank you’; in Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, they say velona, ‘alive’, while the Bembe speakers of the Congo say kuma, ‘be well’. In Tonga a sneeze is often taken to be a sign that your loved one is missing you.
Sneezing protocol
In Brazil, they say saúde (health) and the sneezer answers amen. In Arabic, the sneezer says alhumdullilah (‘praise be to God’) first, to which the other person responds yarhamukumu Allah (‘may God have mercy on you’). The sneezer then replies to that with athabakumu Allah (‘may God reward you’). In Iran, things are more complex. There they say afiyat bashe (‘I wish you good health’) and the sneezer replies elahi shokr (‘thank God for my health’). After the first sneeze Iranians are then supposed to stop whatever they were doing for a few minutes before continuing. If the sneeze interrupts a decision it is taken as an indication not to go ahead. Ignoring the single sneeze means risking bad luck. However, a second sneeze clears the slate.
Falling ill
The miseries of the sick bed are universally known:
smertensleje (Danish) to toss and turn on your bed in pain
fanbing (Chinese) to have an attack of one’s old illness
ruttlin (Cornish) the sound of phlegm rattling in the bronchial tubes
miryachit (Russian) a disease in which the sufferer mimics everything that is said or done by another
False friends
gem (Mongolian) defect
lavman (Turkish) enema
angel (Dutch) sting
bad (Arabic) amputation
bladder (Dutch) blister
santa (Egyptian Arabic) wart
turd (Persian) delicate or fragile
Bedside manner
Illness demands sympathy, but the Indonesian word besuk suggests that this is not always forthcoming. It means to refuse to visit a sick person. Possibly with good reason:
bawwal (Persian) one who pisses in bed
osurgan (Turkish) someone who farts a lot
dobol (Indonesian) to have a swollen anus
ra’ora’oa (Cook Islands Maori) to have swollen testicles
kepuyuh (Indonesian) to have to urinate
jerrkjerrk (Wagiman, Australia) diarrhoea
chiasse (French) runs induced by fear
Impatient?
Perhaps the most telling word in the lexicon of sickness is the Chinese word huiji-jiyi – to avoid following your doctor’s advice for fear of being recognized as the sufferer of a disease.
On reflection
Vowelless
The Tashlhiyt dialect of Berber (North Africa) is known for its vowelless words: tzgr, she crossed, and rglx, I locked. Among the longest are tkkststt, you took it off, and tftktstt, you sprained it. And if we accept ‘r’ as a consonant (which is debatable in Czech, as ‘l’ and ‘r’ function as sonorants and so fulfil the role of a vowel) then words consisting entirely of consonants are common in their language: krk, neck; prst, finger or toe; smrk, pine tree; smrt, death. Words beginning with five consonants are not unknown: ctvrt, quarter and ctvrtek, Thursday. Likewise in Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian there are: crkva, church; mrkva, carrot; trg, market and zrtva, vinegar.
From Cradle to Grave
xian zhang de meimao, bi bu shang hou zhang de huzi (Chinese)
the eyebrows that started growing first can’t compare with the beard that started growing later
In the family way
Pregnancy can be something of a mixed blessing:
mirkha (Quechuan, Peru) the freckles or spots on a woman’s face during pregnancy
waham (Arabic) the craving for certain foods during pregnancy
tafarrus (Persian) the fainting of a pregnant woman
Birth pains
When it comes to childbirth, English tends to be coy. There is no English equivalent for the Inuit word paggiq, which describes the flesh torn as a woman delivers a baby, nor for the Japanese chigobami – bites inflicted on a mother’s nipple by a suckling baby. As for the less painful aspects of giving birth, we lack the Indonesian word uek, the sound of a baby crying when being born, the very precise Ulwa word from Nicaragua, asahnaka, to hold a child on one’s hip with its legs straddling the hipbone facing the mother’s side, let alone the Persian term kundamoya, which is the hair a child is born with.
Birthing partner
The Inuit have a word tunumiaq which denot
es the person who supports a pregnant woman’s back during labour.
First steps in the deep Pacific
In Rapa Nui (Easter Island) there are five detailed words to describe a baby’s early progress: kaukau is a newborn baby first moving its hands and feet; puepue is when it begins to distinguish people and objects; tahuri is when it starts to move from side to side; totoro is when it’s learned to crawl; mahaga is when it is able to stand by itself.
Toddling
English is strangely deficient when it comes to observing the many stages of development:
teete (Zarma, Nigeria) to teach a toddler how to walk
menetah (Indonesian) to help a little child walk by holding its hands to keep it in balance
pokankuni (Tulu, India) to learn by looking at others
keke (Hawaiian) a word of caution to children to cover their nakedness
Growing pains
The next few years are crucial:
polekayi (Tulu, India) writing in a large crooked hand as children tend to do
qiangda (Chinese) a race to be the first to answer a question
nylentik (Indonesian) to hit a child’s ear with the index finger
paski (Tulu, India) punishing a boy by making him alternate between standing and sitting with his arms crossed and both ears seized by his fingers
zhangjin (Chinese) the progress made in one’s intellectual or moral education
Polterabend (German) a stag party for both sexes at which crockery is broken celebrating the end of their single lives
ronin (Japanese) a student who has failed a university entrance examination and is waiting to retake it (adapted from its original sense of a lordless wandering samurai warrior)
Boys and girls
Some cultures go further than merely differentiating between children and adolescents. The Indonesian word balita refers to those under five years old; the Hindi term kumari means a girl between ten and twelve, while bala is a young woman under the age of sixteen. The Cook Islands Maoris continue the sequence with mapu, a youth from about sixteen to twenty-five.
False friends
compromisso (Portuguese) engagement
embarazada (Spanish) pregnant
anus (Latin) old woman
chin (Persian) one who catches money thrown at weddings
moon (Khakas, Siberia) to hang oneself
bath (Scottish Gaelic) to drown
hoho (Hausa, Nigeria) condolences
Mid-life crisis
Before we know it, the carefree days of our youth are just fading memories:
sanada arba’ (Arabic) to be pushing forty
parebos (Ancient Greek) being past one’s prime
kahala (Arabic) to be an old fogey at the height of one’s life
Torschlusspanik (German) the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older (literally, gate-closing panic); this word is often applied to women worried about being too old to have children
Getting older Hawaiian-style
The Hawaiians have a highly specific vocabulary to describe the effects of what the Germans call Lebensabend, the twilight of life:
’aua a woman beginning to become wrinkled
ku’olo an old man with sagging cheeks
kani ko’o an aged man who needs to carry a cane
kani mo’opuna the state of old age when one has many grandchildren
hakalunu extreme old age, as when one is no longer able to walk
ka’i koko bedridden; so old one needs to be carried in a net
pala lau hala the advanced loss of hair; the last stage of life
Kicking the bucket
Other languages have highly inventive euphemisms for the tricky subject of passing on:
nolikt karoti (Latvian) to put down the spoon
colgar los guantes (Spanish, Central America) to hang up the gloves
het hoek omgaan (Dutch) to go around the corner
bater a bota/esticar a perna (Portuguese) to hit the boot or to stretch the leg
avaler son bulletin de naissance (French) to swallow one’s birth certificate
The final reckoning
adjal (Indonesian) the predestined hour of one’s death
Liebestod (German) dying for love or because of a romantic tragedy
pagezuar (Albanian) the state of dying before enjoying the happiness that comes with being married or seeing one’s children married
Chinese whispers
Chinese has a rich vocabulary when it comes to the last moments of life:
huiguang fanzhao the momentary recovery of someone who is dying
yiyan a person’s last words
yiyuan a person’s last or unfulfilled wish
mingmu to die with one’s eyes closed, to die without regret
txiv xaiv a funeral singer whose songs bring helpful, didactic messages from the dead person to the survivors
Last rites
In the end the inevitable takes its course:
talkin (Indonesian) to whisper to the dying (i.e. words read at the end of a funeral to remind the dead person of what to say to the angels of death)
farjam-gah (Persian) the final home (grave)
tunillattukkuuq (Inuit) the act of eating at a cemetery
akika (Swahili) a domestic feast held either for a child’s first haircut or for its burial
On reflection
The long of it
Among languages that build up very long words for both simple and complex concepts are those defined as ‘polysynthetic’, and many of them are found in Australia or Papua New Guinea. The Aboriginal Mayali tongue of Western Arnhem Land is an example, forming highly complex verbs able to express a complete sentence, such as: ngabanmarneyawoyhwarrgahganjginjeng, meaning ‘I cooked the wrong meat for them again’. (This breaks down into nga: I, ban: them, marne: for, yawoyh: again, warrgah: wrongly directed action, ganj: meat, ginje: cook, ng: past tense.) In the Australian language known as Western Desert, palyamunurringkutjamunurtu means ‘he or she definitely did not become bad’.
Germans are not the only ones who like to create complex compound words as nouns. Arbejdsløshedsunderstøttelse is Danish for unemployment benefit, while tilpasningsvanskeligheder means ‘adjustment difficulties’. Precipitevolissimevolmente is Italian for ‘as fast as possible’. And in the Tupi-Guarani Apiaká language of Brazil, tapa-há-ho-huegeuvá means rubber.
But maybe the laurels should go to the Ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes who devised the word lopado-temacho-selacho-galeo-kranio-leipsano-drim-hu-potrimmato-silphio-karabo-melito-katakechumeno-kichl-epikossuphophatto-perister-alektruon-opto-kephallio-kigklo-peleio-lagoio-siraio-baphe-tragano-pterugon, a dish compounded of all kinds of dainties, fish, fowl and sauces.
Otherworldly
zig then ma che; dam choe ma ha (Dzongkha, Bhutan)
do not start your worldly life too late; do not start your religious life too early
Beyond the veil
So what lies beyond the beauties of life, in sight, sound and smell? Do we live for ever? And if so, can any of us ever return?
iwang wayaka (Ulwa, Nicaragua) a spirit that comes out after a person dies, makes noises and yet is never seen
tarniqsuqtuq (Inuit) a communication with a spirit that is unable to ascend
raskh (Persian) the transmigration of the human soul into a plant or tree
hrendi thenok (Sherpa, Nepal) to get in touch with the soul of a dead person
bodach (Scottish Gaelic) the ghost of an old man that comes down the chimney to terrorize children who have been naughty
Spooked in Sumatra
The Indonesians have a particularly varied vocabulary to describe the inhabitants of the spirit world and their attempts to menace the living:
wewe an ugly female ghost with drooping breasts
keblak a ghost cockerel which frightens people at night with the sound of its flapping wings
kuntilanak a ghost masquerading as a beautiful woman to seduce men who are then horrified
to find that she actually has a large hole in her back
Looking into the future
A cynical old Chinese proverb offers the thought ruo xin bu, maile wu; mai gua kou, mei liang dou: ‘if you believe in divination you will end up selling your house to pay the diviners’. But attempting to see into the future has been a constant in all societies for thousands of years:
aayyaf (Arabic) predicting the future by observing the flight of birds
ustukhwan-tarashi (Persian) divination using the shoulder-blade of a sheep
haruspex (Latin) a priest who practised divination by examining the entrails of animals
kilo lani (Hawaiian) an augury who can read the clouds
sortes (Latin) the seeking of guidance by the chance selection of a passage in a book
mandal (Arabic) prophesying while staring into a mirror-like surface
Hide away
Scottish Highlanders formerly had an unusual way of divining the future, known as taghairm. This involved wrapping a man in the hide of a freshly butchered bullock and leaving him alone by a waterfall, under a cliff-face, or in some other wild and deserted place. Here he would think about his problem; and whatever answer he came up with was supposed to have been given to him by the spirits who dwelt in such forbidding spots.
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