The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World (Hardcover)

by Adam Jacot de Boinod (Author) "The first and most essential word in all languages is surely 'hello', the word that enables one human being to converse with another:..." (more)
Key Phrases: consecutive vowels, false friends, Caribbean Spanish, Central America, Cook Islands Maori (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
What began as a fortuitous discovery, when BBC researcher Adam Jacot de Boinod noticed that an Albanian dictionary contained 27 different words each for eyebrows and mustache, has become, after his obsessive 18-month journey through hundreds of foreign dictionaries, a very funny and genuinely informative guide to the world's strangest--and most useful--words. There are many books out there that invent, Sniglets-style, the words that the English language doesn't have but needs. What The Meaning of Tingo shows is that, like natural cures waiting to be found in the plants of the rainforest, many of the words already exist, in the languages of the world's other cultures. Who couldn't find a use for "neko-neko," an Indonesian word for "one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse," or "skeinkjari," a term from the Faroe Islands for "the man who goes among wedding guests offering them alcohol"? Some words that Jacot de Boinod has found are bizarre--"koro," the "hysterical belief that one's penis is shrinking into one's body" in Japanese--while others are surprisingly affecting, like the Inuit word "iktsuarpok," which means "to go outside often to see if someone is coming." And then there's "tingo" itself, from the Pascuense language of Easter Island: "to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by borrowing them."

Nearly any page you open to in The Meaning of Tingo pays hilarious tribute to the inventive genius of the world's peoples. Like Eat, Shoots & Leaves and Schott's Miscellany, with which it shares a quirky British charm and a gift-friendly look and size, The Meaning of Tingo is a UK bestseller that by all rights should become equally popular in the States. --Tom Nissley

The Man Who Swallowed 200 Dictionaries

There is no word (that we know of) to describe someone who spends a year and half of their life poring through a library's worth of dictionaries in hundreds of languages, but that's exactly what Adam Jacot de Boinod did after a chance encounter with a heavy Albanian dictionary. Listen to our interview with the author to hear just how he got started on this strange but fruitful journey, and what he hopes might be the usefulness of his light-hearted book in making us aware of the cultural riches in danger of being lost as the world's living languages become extinct nearly as quickly as its species.

The Meaning of Tingo Language Learning Lab

Adam Jacot de Boinod has chosen a handful of his own favorite words from The Meaning of Tingo Click here to hear him pronounce and define the words, and start slipping them into conversation today!

	nakhur, Persian	a camel that won't give milk until her nostrils are tickled
	areodjarekput, Inuit	to exchange wives for a few days only
	marilopotes, ancient Greek	a gulper of coaldust
	ilunga, Tshiluba, Congo	someone who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time
	cigerci, Turkish	a seller of liver and lungs
	seigneur-terrasse, French	a person who spends much time but little money in a cafe (literally: a terrace lord)
	Torschlusspanik, German	the fear of diminishing opportunities as one gets older (literally: gate-closing panic; often applied to women worried about being too old to have children.)
	pana po'o, Hawaiian	to scratch your head in order to remember something
	waterponie, Afrikaans	jet ski

Review
...a luscious list of linguistic one-liners. -- Daily Express

...a pleasure to dip in to. -- Sunday Telegraph

...compulsively perusable. -- The Times

...destined to be the Eats, Shoots and Leaves of the autumn. -- The Independent

The Meaning of Tingo may well prove to be the must-have stocking-filler for 2005. -- The Economist

A book no well-stocked bookshelf, cistern-top or handbag should be without. -- Stephen Fry

I liked the inventiveness of the Spanish curse "may all your turkey's feathers turn into razor blades. -- Steven Poole, The Guardian

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The; First American Edition edition (March 16, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594200866
• ISBN-13: 978-1594200861
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #526,288 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

74 of 77 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars nice try, June 14, 2006

By	G. B. Talovich (Wulai, Taiwan, ROC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The author has compiled lists of interesting words from languages he doesn't know. That is the problem. He has a lot of examples from Chinese, which I do know. I haven't counted, but I would say more of his Chinese examples are wrong than right. This makes me wonder how accurately he has got the other languages.

Three examples will suffice. On page 5 he informs us that tao in Chinese means `that's the way it goes.' Chinese has been my main language for over 30 years, and I have never heard anybody use tao that way. I can't even figure out what the Chinese is. (I can't figure out the chenyin on the next page, either, or qiubo further on.)

On page 39 the author has apparently got his notes mixed up. Dalu tongtian, ge zou yi bian means The big road goes to the sky, each person makes his own way. It has nothing to do with the purported translation. There are several versions of `the highway comes out of one's mouth,' such as lu chang tzai tzui shang: the road grows on your mouth. In other words, ask directions.

Page 56 ai bu shishou means you love something so much you can't take your hands (shou) off it, not your eyes (mu, yanjing). No matter what, ai bu shih shou is not a word, it is four words. The subtitle says the book is about extraordinary words. Most of his Chinese examples are not words, but cheng-yu, four word sayings, proverbs. For example, page 129 he lists huiji-jiyi; the four words, not one as he says, say taboo disease ban medicine, but what it >means< is to avoid listening to advice about your mistakes, like the author may do if he reads this review. On 145 he lists a long sentence in Chinese, but who's ever heard of it?

Many of his Chinese examples are really obscure, and he need not have used them. Chinese and English express things in quite different ways, so there are plenty of common Chinese words that don't exist in English. Mochi, literally silent contract, means the rapport or teamwork that enables people to cooperate smoothly. Hsienshih, displaying facts, means practical, mercenary, caring only about profit and loss, not feelings or friendship. Sa jiao, sprinkle pampered, means to act cute or sweet to attract the devotion of a loved one. A moment's thought gave me three. I could go on and on.

De Boinod might have been able to guess that Chinese would have a wide range of vocabulary about food and eating, although in England they may not be aware of Chinese cuisine. He managed to write a whole chapter about food and cooking without a word of Chinese. However, with his accuracy, this may not be a bad thing. Kou fu, mouth fortune, means the good luck prerequisite for having opportunities to eat delicious food. Jiao chang, your legs are long, is said of someone who arrives just as something delicious is being served. If this happens often, you may fa fu, develop fortune: get fat. And so forth. In addition, there are all sorts of specialized words concerning the cooking of food.

The book is sloppy. De Boinod can't decide whether to call the language of Easter Island Rapa Nui or Pascuense. On page 111, he lists danh t as the Viet Namese for a church and brothel. T? Where's the rest of the word? Danh tai is a famous talent; dahn tich is a roll book; dahn trat, to strike and miss; what on earth did he have in mind?

Nonetheless, the book is fun to read, if you take it with a grain of salt. I would like to contribute one of my favorites from the Taiwan aborigine Tayal language; I will vouch for the accuracy of this one. A light rain is called tmoq yungay; tmoq, piss, yungay, monkey, monkey piss. Think of hunters walking through the jungle under trees on which monkeys perch...

I enjoyed the illustrations in this book. Also, quite by accident I found that the book makes an excellent mouse pad. The size, shape, and texture of the cover make it just right for a mouse pad, so hold on to the book when you finish.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars good idea, but..., August 9, 2006

By	S. Haesen (Sundgau, France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Several other reviewers have uttered the point I was going to make... the idea is nice, but the examples are, at least for a part, inaccurate... I can only speak for the languages I know and haven't read the whole book from cover to cover yet. But when I already found several undeniable errors, my willingness to read it cover to cover dwindled a bit. Someone already mentioned "Scheissenbedauern" which I have never heard although my mother tongue is German, also "agobilles" isn't German at all, but what really make me shake my head in big doubt was the word "allahaismarladik" (in the chapter "fare well") which according to the author is Wagiman (Australian aborigine language) - "to clear off without telling anyone wher eyou are going". Either this guy does not have any idea, or mislayed his dictionaries, or he is incorporating practical jokes on the less informed reader. Any Turkish speakers here? This word simply means "good bye" (literally "we send you away with God" - notice the word "Allah"?, and the usual answer to this is "güle güle" meaning "laugh, laugh").
If for the next edition the author or editor could eradicate mistakes like that and have a closer look at the correct spelling of words that have "Umlaute" like in German or Turkish (there is no such thing as the supposedly German Grubelsucht because it's Grübelsucht, and the Turkish soyle boyle is correctly spelled söyle böyle - actually an s with a comma below, but my pc does not have this symbol). There are some othe nice languages or dialects from which one could draw examples, Swiss German being one of them :-) Oh, and the Dutch word "aardappel" for potato does not come from "hard apple" but from "apple of the earth" - like in German (Erdapfel) or Swiss German (Härdöpfel). As for Polterabend it's not just any young person's party but the specific party given the night before the marriage. Okay, that's all petty stuff and a lot of details, but I feel that if the languages I understand are already half-translated, I can't really trust the rest.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very inaccurate, June 3, 2006

By	ullr (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I just browsed through this book in a local store and I'm amazed by how inaccurate this book is. My estimation is about 80% of Russian words are mistranslated or even are completely non-existing (I'm a russian native speaker). I wonder how many wrong words this book has in more rare languages like Easter Island's or Innuit.