C.J. Moore > Quotes

“yokomeshi [yo-ko-meh-shee] (noun) As an untranslatable, this one ranks high on my list of favorites. I could not improve on the background given by commentator Boyé Lafayette de Mente about this beautiful word, yokomeshi. Taken literally, meshi means "boiled rice" and yoko means "horizontal," so combined you get "a meal eaten sideways" This is how the Japanese define the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language: yoko is a humorous reference to the fact that Japanese is normally written vertically, whereas most foreign languages are written horizontally. How do English-speakers describe the headache of communicating in an alien tongue? I don't think we can, at least not with as much ease.”
― C.J. Moore, In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World