The Meaning of Tingo
The Meaning of Tingo
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Summary
Drawing on the collective wisdom of over 280 languages, this 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 find not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English, but also those that sound confusingly the same.
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The Meaning of Tingo by Adam Jacot De Boinod
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).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780140515619 |
| ISBN 10 | 0140515615 |
| Title | The Meaning of Tingo |
| Author | Adam Jacot De Boinod |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2005-09-29 |
| Number of pages | 224 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |