Language Trainers Blog

It is a fact that the English country has spread all over the world. No matter where you are you can read all kind of signs in this language. It is particularly interesting the case of pop music. Many times people understand the signs even though they can’t read them directly. The same thing happens with music. Not the majority of people understand the lyrics, but they do enjoy the music. This video pictures the situation.

Cursing and swearing are practised worldwide, and they generally involve using the local version of a small set of words describing an even smaller set of taboos that surround God, family, sex and the more unpleasant body functions. Occasionally, apparently inoffensive words acquire a darker overtone, such as the Chinese wang bah dahn, which literally means a turtle egg but is used as an insult for politicians. And offensive phrases can often be beguilingly inventive:

 
Zolst farliren aleh tseyner achitz eynm, un dos zol dir vey ton (Yiddish) may you lose all your teeth but one and may that one ache

Así te tragues un pavo y todas las plumas se conviertan en cuchillas de afeitar (Spanish) may all your turkey’s feathers turn into razor blades

Gossip – perhaps more accurately encapsulated in the Cook Island Maori word ‘o’onitua, “to speak evil of someone in their absence” –is a pretty universal curse. But it’s not always unjustified.

In Rapa Nui (Easter Islands) anga-anga denotes the thought, perhaps groundless, that one is being gossiped about, but it can also carries the sense that this may have arisen from one’s own feeling of guilt.

A more gentle form of gossip is to be found in Jamaica, where the patois word labrish means not only gossip and jokes, but also songs and nostalgic memories of school.

Whether the person you are talking to suffers from latah (Indonesian), the uncontrollable habit of saying embarrassing things, or from chenyin (Chinese), hesitating and muttering to oneself, conversation may not always be quite as we’d like it:

 
Catra patra (Turkish) the speaking of a language incorrectly and brokenly

Nyelonong (Indonesian) to interrupt without apology

Akkisuitok (Inuit) never to answer

Dui niu tanqin (Chinese) to talk over someone’s head or address the wrong audience (literally, to play the lute to a cow)

‘a’ama (Hawaiian) someone who speaks rapidly, hiding their meaning from one person whilst communicating it to another

dakat’ (Russian) to keep saying yes

dialogue de sourds (French) a discussion in which neither party listens to the other (literally, dialogue of the deaf)

mokita (Kiriwana, Papua New Guinea) the truth that all know but no one talks about

One category of stories concerns Faulkner’s drinking, and these are told with some awe and implied admiration:

-The time he attended a polo match, drank too much, borrowed a polo pony and rode it onto the field, fell off, and woke up “starin’ right into Darryl Zanuck’s teeth bendin’ over me” (so he is quoted). “It was such a feelin’ of horror that I became instantly sober.”

-The time they cleaned out his office after he had left Warner Brothers, and in his desk found only an empty bottle and a sheet of yellow foolscap on which he had written, five hundred times, “Boy meets girl”

-The time he hired a male nurse, whose duties were to follow at three paces with a small black bag containing a bottle, to be produced as needed, and to make sure that Faulkner reached the studio on time the next morning.

Another variety of story revolves around Faulkner’s refusal to become involved in Hollywood’s social life:

-The time, for example, when (it is alleged) he was at last prevailed upon to attend a party at the house of his current employer, found himself increasingly bored but, not wanting to seem rude by excusing himself publicly, went to the second floor, opened a window, and escaped by climbing down a trellis.

-The time he accepted an invitation to a party at Marc Connelly’s house and his friends, thinking that attractive feminine companionship might make him more responsive to the occasion, got him a “date”. After picking her up Faulkner spent the evening sitting in a chair, puffing his pipe and sipping a drink. At last the girl went to Connelly and said, “I don’t think Mr. Faulkner likes me. He hasn’t said a word to me all evening. I’m going home.” Connelly hurried to Faulkner and asked, “Don’t you like your date?” Faulkner puffed his pipe, looked up and said, “Which one is she?”…

Another kind of story hinges on Faulkner’s impermeable Mississippi mannerisms and outlook:

-And the time (probably the most famous of the Faulkner Hollywood stories) when he grew tired of reporting to the little office assigned to him and asked his superiors if they would allow him to write “at home”. The permission was given: some weeks later his employers were horrified to receive a post card postmarked “Oxford, Mississippi”- the place he had meant.

When it comes to personality, some people seem to have been put on the planet to make life easier for everyone else:

 
Cooperar: (Spansih, Central America) to go along willingly with someone else to one’s own disadvantage. 

Abozzare: (Italian) to accept meekly a far from satisfactory situation. 

Ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) someone who is ready to forgive any abuse the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time 

Flattering
 
Vaseliner: (French) to flatter (literally, to apply Vaseline) 

Happobijin: (Japanese) a beauty to all eight directions (a sycophant) 

Radfahrer: (German) one who flatters superiors and browbeats subordinates (literally, a cyclist) 

Fawning 

The Japanese have the most vivid description for hangers-on: kingyo no funi. It literally means ‘goldfish crap’ –a reference to the way that a fish that has defecated often trails excrement behind it for some time.

Sweet-talking others is one thing; massaging your own ego can be another altogether:

Echarse flores: (Spanish) to blow your own trumpet (literally, to throw flowers to yourself) 

Il ne se mouche pas du pied: (French) he has airs above his station (literally, he doesn’t wipe his nose with his foot) 

Yi luan tou shi: (Chinese) courting disaster by immoderately overestimating one’s own strength (literally, to throw an egg against a rock) 

Tirer la couverture a soi: (French) to take the lion’s share, all the credit (literally, to pull the blanket towards oneself)

Specific numbers are used in some colloquial phrases:

Mettre des queues aux zeros (French) to add tails to noughts : to overcharge

Siete (Spanish, Central America) seven : a right-angled tear

Mein Rad hat eine Acht (German) my bike has an eight : a buckled wheel

Se mettre sur son trente et un (French) to put yourself on your thirty one : to get all dressed up

Ein Gesicht wie 37 Tage Regenwetter haben (German) to have a face like thirty-seven days of rain : a long face

Parts of the body have long been used to define small distances, the foot in the imperial system of measuring, for example. The Zarma people of Western Africa find the arm much more useful: Kambe kar is the length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger and gande is the distance between two outstretched arms.

Elsewhere we find:

 
Dos (Hmong, China) from the thumb tip to the middle-finger tip

Muku (Hawaiian) from the fingers of one hand to the elbow of the opposite arm when it is extended

Sejengkal (Malay) the span between the tips of the stretched thumb and little finger

Dangkal (Kapampangan, Philippines) between thumb and forefinger

Most first names, if not derived from myth, place, flower or surnames, have a specific meaning. Patrick, for example, means noble, from the latin patricius. Naomi means ‘pleasant’ in Hebrew, while the Irish Gaelic Kevin literally means ‘comely birth’. More unusual meanings of names from around the world include the following :

Astell (m) sacred cauldron of the gods (Manx)

Delisha (f) happy and makes others happy (Arabic)

Ebru (f) eyebrow (Turkish)

Farooq (m) he who distinguishes truth from falsehood (Arabic)

Fenella (f) fair shoulder (Manx)

Lama (f) with dark lips (Arabic)

Matilda (f) strength in battle (German)

Xicohtencatl (m) angry bumblebee (Nahuatl, Mexico)

Xiao-Xiao (f) morning sorrow (Chinese)