Author Adam Jacot de Boinod has come up with an amazing book on unusual words. The book features words taken from various languages all over the world which do not have any equivalents in English. Take for example the Japanese expression “katahara itai” which refers to the act of laughing so hard that the side of abdomen hurts - one Japanese expression which needed 11 English words to describe. The book “The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World” is a veritable gold mine of many such remarkable words.
It is not only highly enlightening but also very entertaining. According to the author Jacot de Boinod, the dictionary of a language is a great source of insight into its native culture. He cites Hawaiian as an example which has 65 words for fishing net and 108 for sweet potato and the Dutch vocabulary with a word like ‘uitwaaien’ referring to a walk in windy weather for the fun of it, which reflects the light-heartedness of the nation.
Adam Jacot de Boinod hit upon the idea for this book while going through an Albanian language dictionary in 2005. He then trawled through nearly 300 dictionaries to build a collection for this book. Do check out the website here - http://www.themeaningoftingo.com.
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