Customer Reviews

The Meaning of Tingo: and Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I agree with other reviewers that the idea is quite nice, but the research has been very sloppy. As a native german speaker, I found that he got about 40% of the German examples wrong. For instance, the word 'scheissbedauern' simply does not exist in German -- as one might verify by picking up any German-English dictionary. (Upon googling, one finds that this word has appeared in the literature -- but only in the American literature.) Hopefully, some later edition of the book will fix these kind of problems.

I must say that as someone who loves both language and learning about other cultures, I found the concept behind THE MEANING OF TINGO irresistible. Unique words from other cultures expressing foreign values? The Albanians have 27 different words for moustache types? Excellent!

And generally speaking, TINGO lived up to its promise. Herein I learned that the French have euphemisms for death that are both humorous ("avaler son bulletin de naissance" -- to swallow one's birth certificate) and poetic ("sucrer les fraises" -- to sugar the strawberries).

And yet, doubts lurked. TINGO is a reference book without an index. The author's jacket bio reveals much of his research was done on-line, a sure way to gather misinformation. An NPR interview seemed to confirm that de Boinod's approach to researching was a bit casual. And now, reading through some of the more damning reader reviews on Amazon, I see there may have been a number of mistakes in this small volume.

The book was a funny and enjoyable bit of light reading, but I'll downgrade my five-star review to four, and assume that de Boinod is not a complete "schlimazl" (Yiddish for "inept and lazy fool"), and that he got MOST of his information right. I hope. Otherwise, I'm a "sucker" (American slang for... oh, never mind.)

If rated on sheer entertainment value, this book would earn 4.5 stars. Unfortunately, as has been documented in several internet fora, the author's credulity far outweighs his scholarship. Quite simply, an unhealthy percentage (at my estimate 20-30%) of the 'words' quoted in this book simply do not exist*. Thus, on scholarship, the book earns only 1.5 stars.

My 3-star overall rating represents an average of the 4.5 for entertainment value and 1.5 for scholarship.

* Two of the more egregious examples are the infamous 'razbliuto', alleged to be a Russian word meaning 'the sentimental feeling you have about someone you once loved but no longer do', but whose existence is denied by any native Russian-speaker, and 'Scheissenbedauern', an alleged German word for `the disappointment one feels when something turns out not nearly as badly as one had expected'. There is no such word as 'Scheissenbedauern' in German - nor could there be, as it doesn't even obey the standard rules of German for forming portmanteau words (it would have to be 'Scheissbedauern'). Even minimal checking on the author's part would have alerted him to the bogus nature of this entry. Unfortunately, it becomes clear that, time after time, the author failed to carry out even the most basic fact-checking for this book.

In England and in America, Rice Crispies are famous for going "Snap, crackle, pop!" However, they do not do so everywhere. In Germany, they go "Pif! Paf! Pouf!" In France, they go "Cric! Crac! Croc!" In Spain, they go "Cris! Cras! Cros!" And in Holland, where they have graduated beyond monosyllables, they go "Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!" The miracle of the polyglot Crispies is one of the many surprises to be found in _The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World_ (The Penguin Press) by Adam Jacot de Boinod. The book is a lighthearted compilation of curiosities, mostly words for most of which there is no equivalent in English, words for which de Boinod confesses he has a quiet obsession. As a catalogue of miscellanies, the book is fully entertaining, but it sometimes raises (and cannot answer) profound questions about the differences of cultures.

There are plenty of words here for which it would be useful to have English equivalents. "Schadenfreude" is such a useful word that it is one of the few here which I have heard English-speakers using already. It is German, and means literally "damage joy", and signifies the feeling of malicious pleasure we get when misfortune comes to someone else. English really needs a word for the catchy tune that gets stuck in your head against your volition, but German already has it: "ohrwurm", which literally means "ear worm". There are many other words here that make a reader think "How can they possibly have needed one word to describe that?" For instance, as in the title, the meaning of "tingo" is from the Pascuense language of Easter Island, and is "to borrow things from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left." One supposes that it is an exaggeration, but how common is unscrupulous borrowing among Easter Islanders that such hyperbole requires a single word? Colors are universal, so how can we explain that English and Japanese have seven named colors in the rainbow, but the Shona of Zimbabwe have but four for the spectrum, and the Basa language of Liberia has only "ziza" for red/orange/yellow and "hui" for green/blue/purple? Would not those Basa-speakers have been able to tell that red and yellow are distinctly different? Lacking words for the two, could they not express the difference, or could they simply not see it? There are also surprising correspondences between languages. We say "so-so" for mediocrity, and for some reason repetition is used in many languages to express this concept: "tako tako" in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, "cosi cosi" in Italian, or "atal atal" in Occitan are just a few.

_Tingo_ is a book to dip into for a bit of a laugh or puzzlement, but it is well organized, with chapters on greetings, love, death, eating, and so on. It has interesting sidebars on such things as whistle languages or one-letter words ("u" in Samoan is an enlarged land snail). Readers will be entertained and will have renewed admiration for the complexities of language and for the varieties of human cultures.

How many times have you run into a situation where you thought, "I wish they had a word for that". If you have, The Meaning of Tingo is for you. This very cool little book has words and definitions from hundreds of languages that will make you laugh - and nod knowingly, as well. Wish I could get my point across more effectively in a short review, but I clearly lack "sprezzatura" (Italian) - the effortless technique of a great artist. That's Page 109, by the way. Perfect gift for that great Jeopardy player at your house.

As a native speaker of one of the less familiar languages mentioned in the book, I found the glosses to be oversimpilified at best and completely wrong at worst. It seems the author wanted to make a point and to do so, resorted to making the facts fit the explanation. Since the facts of one language have been distorted in this fashion, how is one to know that the facts of languages one has no knowledge of have been similarly distorted?
Reading about languages and their peculiarities is fun, but if the facts are not accurate, then the whole book is quite suspect. I do not recommend the book, unless you want to see how your language has been distorted.

When you just can't think of the right word, this book will help. It has LOTS of right words, from all kinds of languages. No, it's not exactly a Thesaurus, but if you have a few minutes and want to brighten your point of view, just sit with this book and you'll start to giggle. So many lovely words like the Japanese word "bakku-shan" designating the woman who looks great from behind, but pretty ugly from the front. Other relational words such as the Persian pair, "bawusni" -- a wife whose husband does not love her and seldom visits and "farik" -- a woman who hates her husband. (Hm, could be the same woman, no?)

But, sit and giggle, or sit and gasp with horror, the book is a fascinating collection of words from around the world. You may even be so taken with a few that you will write them down, commit them to memory and incorporate them into your conversation so that you can make others say "What?"

All in all, a good book, and it arrived in the advertised shape, so a good purchase all around. I'll give this book a 73, Dick. You can even dance to it.