An article by John Walsh in the Independent newspaper has given me such pleasure this morning. It's a review of a book, The Meaning of Tingo, which came about when the author Adam Jacot de Boinod discovered that the Albanians had 27 words for moustache, and started collecting "extra-ordinary words that abound in the world". Some are beautifully precise. NAKHUR, for example, is the Persian word for a camel that won't give milk unless her nostrils are tickled, but once you hear others, you can't imagine a better word for the job. QUEESTING is the Dutch word for allowing a lover access to one's bed under covers for a chit-chat. Lovely word in itself that, chit-chat. SEIGNEUR-TERRASSE, is the French word for someone who spends time, but not money at a cafe (yep, been there, done that). YUYIN is the Chinese for the remnants of sound that stay in the ears of the hearer. But before you spend as long as I've done on this article, be careful of too much FUCHA - the Portugese for using a company's time and resources for personal purposes.
And my writing prompt for today is .... I want to speak another language.
This work by Sarah Salway is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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