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They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases
They Have a Word for It takes the reader to the far corners of the globe to discover words and phrases for which there are no equivalents in English. From the North Pole to New Guinea, from Easter Island to Tibet, Howard Rheingold explores more than forty familiar and obscure languages to discover genuinely useful (rather than simply odd) words that can open up new ways of understanding and experience life.
284 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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1137 people want to read
About the author
Howard Rheingold
57 books111 followersAloha! I'm always excited to interact with readers. I'm new to Goodreads but will do my best to check in from time to time. A great deal of info and resources, articles, videos, can be found on my website, which I will list here.
I'm 65 and live in Marin County, California -- just north of the Golden Gate -- and when I'm not writing (and when weather permits, when I am writing) I'm usually to be found in my garden.
I've been a writer my entire adult life, starting at age 23, although I do a lot of other things, teaching at Stanford among them.
Judy and I have been together for 45 years! Married for 35 of those years. We have a grown daughter and two dogs that we pamper.
I'm 65 and live in Marin County, California -- just north of the Golden Gate -- and when I'm not writing (and when weather permits, when I am writing) I'm usually to be found in my garden.
I've been a writer my entire adult life, starting at age 23, although I do a lot of other things, teaching at Stanford among them.
Judy and I have been together for 45 years! Married for 35 of those years. We have a grown daughter and two dogs that we pamper.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 61 reviews
February 11, 2022
The author starts this book with the statement, "This book is meant to be fun", and he was spot on. Although not a linguist, Rheingold looks at words and phrases from languages other an English and illustrates how English speakers may want to adopt words from other languages that explain situations and states of mind much more clearly than does English. He shows how language shapes culture and how culture shapes language and it is a learned but not dry study of how humans communicate. He divides the book into chapters such as Human Family Affairs, Serious Business, States of Mind and eight other categories which touch on all aspects of human interaction.
I think my favorite expression which at first appears to have nothing to do with English culture is: hari kuyo a Japanese phrase meaning a shrine for broken sewing needles. Now how can we possibly translate that phrase into something that makes sense in English? The Japanese believe that since the sewing needles died in the service of their owners, it is only fair that when their work is done, they should be buried with honor. The concept indicates an attitude and suddenly you remember those old boots that are falling apart but you still wear them or a favorite shirt that just is too dear to throw away, so we save it. That is the spirit of hari kuyo!! If you love language and how we can use words from other cultures to better define what we mean, I highly recommend this book. It is a re-read for me and well worth it.
I think my favorite expression which at first appears to have nothing to do with English culture is: hari kuyo a Japanese phrase meaning a shrine for broken sewing needles. Now how can we possibly translate that phrase into something that makes sense in English? The Japanese believe that since the sewing needles died in the service of their owners, it is only fair that when their work is done, they should be buried with honor. The concept indicates an attitude and suddenly you remember those old boots that are falling apart but you still wear them or a favorite shirt that just is too dear to throw away, so we save it. That is the spirit of hari kuyo!! If you love language and how we can use words from other cultures to better define what we mean, I highly recommend this book. It is a re-read for me and well worth it.
November 13, 2020
শব্দ-জিজ্ঞাসুদের জন্যে প্রতিদিন দুয়েক লোকমা করে পড়ার মতো বই। ভিন্ন ভাষা ভিন্ন সংস্কৃতির বাহন, শব্দকে বাহন মেনে সে সংস্কৃতির চকিত ঝলক দেখার আনন্দ মিলবে।
October 25, 2015
The title claims it contains "untranslatable" words, but this is outright lies. The author's stated goal was to share with us words for concepts we're already familiar with -- like family disagreements, political bribes, spirit guides -- in an attempt to get us to think about these things from the perspective of other cultures. Not necessarily a bad idea, but the words selected are random and pedestrian, and the definitions are too brief to give us any fresh insight into the weighty topics the author wants to tackle. There isn't much variety in the languages, either -- lots of stuff from Japan, Germany, and the Trobriand Islands, not a lot from anywhere else.
My real quibble with this book is that I didn't want new words for old concepts, I wanted new words for new concepts. I wanted to learn words that were truly "untranslatable" -- words that require a whole essay to define, instead of a single sentence. The only chapter in this book that delivered was the one on Beauty, which had a plethora of fascinating, nuanced words for aesthetic appreciation, words like wabi, sabi, yugen, rasa, hozh'q. However, this isn't enough to make the book worth purchasing.
My real quibble with this book is that I didn't want new words for old concepts, I wanted new words for new concepts. I wanted to learn words that were truly "untranslatable" -- words that require a whole essay to define, instead of a single sentence. The only chapter in this book that delivered was the one on Beauty, which had a plethora of fascinating, nuanced words for aesthetic appreciation, words like wabi, sabi, yugen, rasa, hozh'q. However, this isn't enough to make the book worth purchasing.
December 3, 2022
I have a lot of respect for the purpose and possibilities of Howard Rheingold’s They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases. His publishers hurt him by the cover’s promise that this would be a “A Lighthearted Lexicon”. Some of it is. Much of it is quite earnest and many of the ideas are quite powerful.
The author has combed through a very wide variety of cultures and located many words that express ideas and attempts to label experiences and philosophies that many of us would benefit by seriously embracing. At a quibble some will be very hard to pronounce and unlikely to have a proper moment in the public conscious. My bottom line is that I found the writing style off putting. Between over explaining and over selling too many of the words get lost. Too often he wants to find a way to shoe horn the word into a conversation and not enough effort to help promote the many new ways of thinking the best of these words represent.
The author has combed through a very wide variety of cultures and located many words that express ideas and attempts to label experiences and philosophies that many of us would benefit by seriously embracing. At a quibble some will be very hard to pronounce and unlikely to have a proper moment in the public conscious. My bottom line is that I found the writing style off putting. Between over explaining and over selling too many of the words get lost. Too often he wants to find a way to shoe horn the word into a conversation and not enough effort to help promote the many new ways of thinking the best of these words represent.
October 10, 2008
To quote author Howard Rheingold:
"ho'oponopomo (HO-OH-poh-no-poh-no) Hawaiian, in origin: Solving a problem by talking it out. A social mechanism our culture desperately needs. It is a social gathering and healing process that combines the functions of a religious ceremony, group therapy, family counseling session, town hall meeting, and small claims court. An occasion for this event might be a dispute beteween in-laws, a disagreement between business partners, sexual complications, or a minor territorial dispute."
After an invocation of the Gods the aggrieved parties sit down and discuss the issue until everything is set right. (The Hawaiian word, "pono" means "Righteousness" Literally, everyone agrees to stay in the same room until some resolution is reached. It is a powerful covenant, taken seriously by all the involved parties. I am told by Hawaiian acquaintances there are circumstances in which one may leave the room briefly to care for bodily functions. Other than that, eating, sleeping, all done in the same room, until some agreement is found. The closest thing we have in American is "Locked Door Negotiations" for Labor Relations and since the 1970s a social science called Conflict Resolution. That is currently practiced in many states by lawyers and people trained in generating Conflict Resolution.
"ho'oponopomo (HO-OH-poh-no-poh-no) Hawaiian, in origin: Solving a problem by talking it out. A social mechanism our culture desperately needs. It is a social gathering and healing process that combines the functions of a religious ceremony, group therapy, family counseling session, town hall meeting, and small claims court. An occasion for this event might be a dispute beteween in-laws, a disagreement between business partners, sexual complications, or a minor territorial dispute."
After an invocation of the Gods the aggrieved parties sit down and discuss the issue until everything is set right. (The Hawaiian word, "pono" means "Righteousness" Literally, everyone agrees to stay in the same room until some resolution is reached. It is a powerful covenant, taken seriously by all the involved parties. I am told by Hawaiian acquaintances there are circumstances in which one may leave the room briefly to care for bodily functions. Other than that, eating, sleeping, all done in the same room, until some agreement is found. The closest thing we have in American is "Locked Door Negotiations" for Labor Relations and since the 1970s a social science called Conflict Resolution. That is currently practiced in many states by lawyers and people trained in generating Conflict Resolution.
August 1, 2013
Charming. Short explanations of words from non-English languages not readily translatable into English in one word.
Some examples:
*Schadenfreude--from German: when someone is happy at someone else's misfortune.
*A cute one: Drachenfutter--also from German: when a husband brings home a gift or bouquet to his wife in apology for something he's said or done. [Drachenfutter=dragon fodder]
*Treppenwitz or esprit de l'escalier: when you think of a clever remark when it's too late to say it. 1st is from the German; 2nd is French.
*hari kuyo--from Japanese: literally 'a shrine for old sewing machine needles', but what about those motheaten but toasty slippers or comfy old sweater you just can't part with? How about some of our attics?
Meant to be dipped into from time to time, but I found myself not wanting to put the book down.
Some examples:
*Schadenfreude--from German: when someone is happy at someone else's misfortune.
*A cute one: Drachenfutter--also from German: when a husband brings home a gift or bouquet to his wife in apology for something he's said or done. [Drachenfutter=dragon fodder]
*Treppenwitz or esprit de l'escalier: when you think of a clever remark when it's too late to say it. 1st is from the German; 2nd is French.
*hari kuyo--from Japanese: literally 'a shrine for old sewing machine needles', but what about those motheaten but toasty slippers or comfy old sweater you just can't part with? How about some of our attics?
Meant to be dipped into from time to time, but I found myself not wanting to put the book down.
October 7, 2011
Here, at Goodreads, we are all lovers of words.... This collection of words from other cultures is both entertaining and enlightening.
For all those that think that English is a rich language, comes this fun little book that shows us how other cultures have developed words to express "just that"--a situation, and emotion, and event or a relationship.
It is fun to read and to say, "Oh, yes. I wish we had this word in English." Come to think of it, there are many words in English that have been adapted from other languages. With globalization, we may see more of these words enter our language, so reading this book gives us a hint of the future.
The only drawback is the indexing of the book. You can't locate words easily.
For all those that think that English is a rich language, comes this fun little book that shows us how other cultures have developed words to express "just that"--a situation, and emotion, and event or a relationship.
It is fun to read and to say, "Oh, yes. I wish we had this word in English." Come to think of it, there are many words in English that have been adapted from other languages. With globalization, we may see more of these words enter our language, so reading this book gives us a hint of the future.
The only drawback is the indexing of the book. You can't locate words easily.
June 14, 2007
Language can expand or contract our experience of the world. Rheingold has assembled a collection of words from cultures other than American for which there are no English equivalents. That meaningful look exchanged between two people, for instance, has a word to express it in Tierra del Fuegan. In Sanskrit, there is a word for the confusion between a symbol and the reality it represents.
Learning words for things we have difficulty even describing in English, or for which we lack even concepts, such as the Japanese word for a flawed detail that creates an elegant whole, piqued my mind and made me stretch to imagine different ways to view the world.
Learning words for things we have difficulty even describing in English, or for which we lack even concepts, such as the Japanese word for a flawed detail that creates an elegant whole, piqued my mind and made me stretch to imagine different ways to view the world.
October 8, 2017
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
As Stephanie M says, this "lexicon" is *not* of "untranslatable words and phrases." The concepts here are well-known in English, and so are exceedingly translatable. Go like her review now.
As Stephanie M says, this "lexicon" is *not* of "untranslatable words and phrases." The concepts here are well-known in English, and so are exceedingly translatable. Go like her review now.
October 7, 2007
i'm told the anthropology of this book is crap, and it's a little fruity, but i love words, and it's got some good'n's.
July 17, 2011
The author is not a real linguist, it seems, but this book is very enjoyable - I took notes on all the words in it!
September 22, 2017
THIS REVIEW MIGHT BE CONSIDERED UNSUITABLE FOR MINORS.
review of
Howard Rheingold's They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 19, 2017
Yes, yes, you can read the full review, "They Have a Word for "It"", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Since February of 2016 I've been working on my 'opera' entitled "Endangered Languages, Endangered Cultures, Endangered Ideas". For the libretto of this, I've been reading bks on endangered languages & writing reviews of them so that I can quote from the reviews (&, therefore, the bks as well) for the 'opera' txt. The 1st 2 bks I read were Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine's Vanishing Voices - The Extinction of the World's Languages ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ) & Mark Abley's Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ). They Have a Word for It is the 3rd. I only plan to read one more, Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey's Cherokee Words With Pictures, before I move on from this research phase & start finalizing both the libretto & the rest of the 'opera'. Those of you interested in this project can witness my feature-length quasi-documentary about the development of the software for it here: https://youtu.be/fiAVrCNtKvQ . Those of you who don't have the patience for something that long that doesn't have guns, tits, murder, or robbery in it can witness the considerably abridged version here: https://archive.org/details/ELIPabridged .
Since one of the (I-wd-hope UNNECESSARY) justifications for giving a shit about the extinction of languages is that every language is an expression of the unique world-view of its speakers & has words to express unique concepts, if only ones expressive of local knowledge unknown outside the environment in wch it's spoken - wch is more than enough from a botanist's perspective, e.g.. That makes Rheingold's "Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases" perfect for my interests.
Alas, one thing that always rubs me the wrong way are hired hand writers, hacks, as they're known. I had a friend who got a job as a writer of copy for coffee-table bks b/c a friend of his had had the job & had moved on from it & had recommended my friend as a replacement. Nepotism & croneyism RULES (unfortunately). Anyway, this friend had very expensive bks out w/ his name on the cover credited as the author. Now when I think of a real author, I think of someone who conceives of the bk themselves, does their own research AND writes the thing - then resisting 'corrections' from the publisher w/ a fervent tenacity. Cf:
"It all started with a friendly lunch. Jeremy Tarcher is the kind of publisher a writer dreams about. He isn't likely to merge with a new multinational conglomerate every other week, as book publishers are wont to do, and he actually likes to sit down with authors and talk about ideas. During one of our brainstorming sessions, Jeremy mentioned his desire to publish a lexicon of "untranslatable words" that don't exist in English but would add a new dimension to our lives if we were somehow to import them from their original languages." - pp 1-2
Ouch. Howard Rheingold is a hired hand, not a "real author" in the sense described above. Being in a position where a publisher even asks you to do something like this shows that the hired hand is a person of privilege moving in social circles that wd be more likely to put myself, a "real author", in jail - if only to keep the world safe for privilege. Oh, well.. Seem like harsh judgment? It's not like I haven't accumulated experiential reasons for such bold & bald statements.
Nonetheless, this bk, having been published in 1988, strikes me as a pioneering work in favor of cherishing languages & appreciating them & nursing them away from extinction. I respect it for that. It even seems to be trying to be 'popular' - wch I suppose might not be a bad idea if one's seriously concerned about endangered languages.
"This book is meant to be fun. Open it at random and see if you don't find something that will amuse you, entertain you, titillate your curiosity, tickle your perspective. But you should know that reading this book might have serious side effects at a deeper level. Even if you read one page as you stand in a bookstore, you are likely to find a custom or an idea that could change the way you think about the world. It was to do with the insidious way words mold thoughts." - p 1
Apparently "fun" goes hand-in-hand w/ not reading the whole thing, instead opening "it at random and see[ing] if you don't find something that will amuse you, entertain you" n'at. Somewhat recently, I wrote a bk review about a such that I'm somewhat of an expert on, the review was long. The author & I were slightly acquainted, I thought the bk was generally excellent. The author wrote me & sd something to the effect of "I assume your review can just be opened at random & read in brief excerpts?" to wch I replied: "NO, my review is linear & meant to be carefully read in its entirety from front-to-back."
My bks tend to present accumulative information that inform each new section, reading my explicative didactic writing is meant to be absorbed, not skimmed over like something stupid like an Andy Warhol portrait. I suspect that most readers aren't going to find They Have a Word for It "fun" simply b/c it's not a fictional narrative w/ sex & violence - the 2 poles of the conventional entertainment experience. A group of friends & I gave a concert of a piece of mine called "A Catamaran Animist Vigor" ( http://youtu.be/cn3U055X-2U ). There was a fair-sized audience of potentially open-minded people, some of whom probably had some expertise on music. At the end, I told people that that was my idea of entertainment & asked if anyone in the audience found the piece entertaining. Apparently no-one did. I remember performance poet Jackson Mac Low telling me that he meant for his works to be entertainment too but I'm not sure many audience members wd've agreed w/ him about that either.
"I even used a computer bulletin board to gather tips, and through it I met Corinne, my researcher, who extended my list of a couple of dozen words to a list of several hundred, from which I selected the entries for this book.
"For those of you who haven't dipped into the world of cybernetic virtual communities, a computer bulletin board is a computer that is hooked up to a telephone line. People who know that computer's telephone number can use their own computer to dial in to the bulletin board, then look through a menulike list of conversations that are stored in the bulletin board system (known in the acronym-happy computer world as a "BBS"), in order to find a topic of discussion that interests them." - p 3
WHEW! Remember that this bk was 1st published in 1988 so it was written in the mid 1980s. When I 1st studied computers in 1973 or shortly thereafter, I don't think I ever laid hands on a computer, I just learned how to write flow-charts. I started having friends in the 1980s w/ computers but they were somewhat rare. I, personally, didn't have an email address until 1996 & I had to go to the library to check my email b/c I didn't have a set-up at home that cd support such activity. It wasn't until 1997 that I had a computer that I cd use for connecting to the internet & that was thru dial-up. Dial-up was vvvveeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy slooooooooowwwwwww. Then I progressed to DSL & most recently to FIOS & wireless.
Anyway, the point is that even tho this bk was 1st published a mere 29 yrs ago it's explaining something that can be done much more efficiently thru a search engine that almost everyone in many if not most countries are likely to have access to on their phones. That's truly mind-boggling.. - &, yet, how many people w/ access to this incredible resource actually use it for much of anything? I quote from the most recent review I wrote before this one:
"Given that I've been working on an 'opera' about endangered languages for the last 20 months (see a documentary about the work-in-progress here: https://youtu.be/fiAVrCNtKvQ ), the following section was of particular interest to me. The narrator comes upon some locals & attempted to engage them in conversation:
""I asked them casually about the fishing; but, instead of answering, they just shook their heads silently, and stared at me. I repeated the question, addressing more particularly a great, gaunt fellow at my elbow; yet again I received no answer. Then the man turned to a comrade and said something rapidly in a language that I did not understand; and, at once, the whole crowd of them fell to jabbering in what, after a few moments, I guessed to be pure Irish." - p 3
"""Yabbering" and "jabbering" are interesting words. They show up all over the English-speaking world whenever a speaker feels like sneering at animals or a minority people. Look up "jabber" in the Oxford English Dictionary, and you'll find quotations in which the term applies to monkeys, Flemish servants, seabirds, and Jews. It often betrays contempt, the dictionary observes, for "the speaking of a language which is unintelligible to the hearer."" - p 21, Mark Abley's Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages
"In honor of the 'jabber' that the narrator couldn't understand, I've decided to create a dialog in Irish esp for this bk review. Isn't that clever of me?:
"An gceapann tú go bhfuil an duine seo díreach jabbering? Nó an dóigh leat go bhfuil sé ag labhairt teanga i ndáiríre nach bhfuil cuid mhaith príobháideach ann? Tá sé deacair a rá, nach bhfuil sé? Is cosúil go gcailltear é ionas go bhféadfadh sé a bheith míchothromaithe go meabhrach freisin. An gceapann tú go bhfuil sé ag iarraidh iarracht a dhéanamh linn a ithe? Nó mátálann lenár mhná? B'fhéidir gurb é an norm is dóigh a thagann sé as an tslí sin. - Irish
"Now, if you don't speak Irish & you're not a lazy good-for-nothing piece of shit that emits more methane than the oxygen you breath in can replace then you'll copy the above paragraph into an Irish-to-English (if that's your preferred language) translator & find out what I've written. C'm'on, it'll only take a few minutes, why not take advantage of these translation programs? WE ARE SO DAMNED LUCKY TO LIVE IN A TIME WHEN THEY EXIST!! Really."" - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rheingold's disclaimer-like honesty is welcome:
"I am not a linguist, and this book is not an attempt to provide rigorous evidence for one linguistic hypothesis or another. But when I did some reading about the linguistic theory known as the Whorfian hypothesis, I began to understand the formal underpinnings of the phenomenon I had come to know through sheer iteration of examples. In light of these theories about the influence of thought upon language, I began to see this book as something quite different from the other books about unusual words." - pp 4-5
"If you want to change the way people think, you can educate them, brainwash them, bribe them, drug them. Ot you can teach them a few carefully chosen new words." - p 5
But even more welcome is his emphasis on teaching "carefully chosen new words." But like all things that 'might be good for people' introducing new concepts means wrapping them in same old same old sugar pills. If They Have a Word for It had been titled They Killed Babies Over One Word & was a lurid tale of drug addiction, rape, & child abuse with the ONE WORD introduced as an incredibly horrific surprise ending to a tale of total degradation then, maybe, a few people might remember the word.
"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
"The words quoted above were written by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages. This passage from Language, Thought and Reality is the heart of the theory that has come to be known as the Whorfian hypothesis, which asserts that the world is experienced in different ways by different linguistic communities and proposes that the differences in language actually cause the differences in the way the linguistic communities think." - pp 5-6
Now the last sentence above brings up an interesting issue for me: What came 1st? The language or the worldview? As w/ the chicken & the egg, there doesn't strike me as being an acceptable simple answer. Some might claim that a worldview can't exist w/o a language to formulate it. I tend to think that feelings & intuition are pre-lingual & that they can formulate worldviews.
Let's say that you live in an environment where there're rattlesnakes. You may know that they can potentially kill you w/ their poison but that they're mostly likely to bite if you're perceived as a threat. It's not like rattlesnakes bite everything in their vicinity all day long. If they did, THEY wdn't live long. Now let's say you're a pre-lingual creature living near rattlesnakes but not threatened by them b/c you're not a threat to THEM. Doesn't THAT shape yr worldview? THEN, as language is born w/in yr ancestors, isn't there the chance that the language's worldview will partially grow out of that instinctual knowledge?
SO, maybe, just maybe, I'm arguing that pre-lingual states of mind shape worldviews that shape language that, in turn, further shapes the worldview. Once worldview & language coexist they inevitably shape each other simultaneously & feelings & intuition & whatnot are in there too.
I am a Whorfian hylozoist - not that that combination of words necessarily pre-exists my writing them.
"If the more familiar Romance languages seem under-represented, and the esoteric languages like Bantu, Kiriwana, or Navajo offered in abundance, it is because some people from obscure linguistic groups have come up with words that represent powerful ideas." - p 9
Is that what it is? Rheingold's readership is going to be mainly English speakers &, therefore, people more familiar w/ Romance language ideas than ones from other cultures. The mere fact that they're not likely to be familiar w/ the ideas in "Bantu, Kiriwana, or Navajo" is enuf to 'justify' exposing them/us to them. I'm thankful for that. I prefer not to be willfully ignorant. In general, I like Rheingold's attitude:
"This book differs from other amusing and intriguing collections of unusual words because these words are meant to be used. Some will make you see things differently, many will help you show others how to see in new ways. Don't worry about strict pronunciation. Go ahead and make these words an active part of your vocabulary. It is unlikely that a Kiriwina-speaking Trobriand islander will jump into your conversation to correct you. And if a person fluent in Navajo catches you in a slight mispronunciation, appreciation of your efforts will surely outweigh any reproach for your accent. Don't let the fear of criticism by the bores and Korinthenkackers (chapter five) affect you. You will find a confident power well up when you muster the courage to help expand the scope of out language." - p 10
THERE IS NO DEFINITIVE PRONUNCIATION OF ANY WORD. There, I've sd it, I've uttered what wd be blasphemy to the pompous, the pretentious. Well, don't fuck 'em (as opposed to "Fuck 'Em"). The pronunciation of a word is determined by who uses it. If you understand what they're saying then that pronunciation is ok for you. If you don't understand, ask them to repeat it & listen more intently. Sooner or later, you'll probably figure it out between the 2 of you if you get the chance. I remember being in a Scottish Fish'n'Chips shop & being asked by the counter-person what I wanted. I didn't understand a word but I knew what the context implied. It took me awhile to adapt to the Scots accent.. - but that didn't make it wrong - for either of us.
Is it more correct to say "Boo-lay" or "Boo-lez"? More corrected to say "Pen-der-reck-ee" or Pen-der-retz-ski"? I'd favor the pronunciation in the country that the person's from, if I know what that pronunciation is, but in a pinch either will do for me.
"Human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. . . . The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is, to a large extent, unconsciously built up on the language habits of a group. . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
"Edward Sapir, The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language" - p 13
Indeed? Imagine a child raised only on war words. What wd those words be w/o context? If those war words were used in non-warlike situations wd the child still be completely war-like? In other words, IMO, it's not just the words, it's also the feelings that accompany their use. What if a mother were to say: "I'll bomb the fuck out of you you inferior species" to their child as they rock them to sleep or suckle them? Imagine "real world" written as 'real world' or punned as 'reel world'.
I think of Jacob Wasserman's Caspar Hauser (1928) & of Werner Herzog's film Kaspar Hauser (1974) & of Paul Auster's City of Glass (1985) & of Umberto Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language (1995) - in other words, I think of the stories about children deprived of language as experiments to see whether there's any sort of language inherent w/in them. Of course, I'm addressing exceptions here & Sapir's addressing generalities.
Since Rheingold is neither the originator of this bk or the main researcher, his main function seems to be to organize, generalize, & comment. Each chapter has a theme, the 1st is "Human Family Affairs - People Words". The following quote will give the reader an idea of how he introduces the theme:
"On Easter Island, the words hakamaroo and tingo refer to different kinds of outrageous borrowing behavior. The Yiddish words tsuris and nakhes refer to two extreme emotions that only your son or daughter can invoke in you." - p 14
I'm less interested in Rheingold's philosophical contextualizing than I am in the actual words - wch, fortunately, are in sufficient abundance:
" ho'oponopono (Hawaiian)
Solving a problem by talking it out. [noun]"
[..]
"A ho'oponopono (HO-OH-poh-no-poh-no) is a social gathering and healing process that combines the functions of a religious ceremony, group therapy, family counseling session, town-hall meeting, and small-claims court." - p 16
B/c of word limits, the review is cut off here. You can read the full review, "They Have a Word for "It"", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
review of
Howard Rheingold's They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - September 19, 2017
Yes, yes, you can read the full review, "They Have a Word for "It"", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
Since February of 2016 I've been working on my 'opera' entitled "Endangered Languages, Endangered Cultures, Endangered Ideas". For the libretto of this, I've been reading bks on endangered languages & writing reviews of them so that I can quote from the reviews (&, therefore, the bks as well) for the 'opera' txt. The 1st 2 bks I read were Daniel Nettle & Suzanne Romaine's Vanishing Voices - The Extinction of the World's Languages ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ) & Mark Abley's Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages ( https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/... ). They Have a Word for It is the 3rd. I only plan to read one more, Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey's Cherokee Words With Pictures, before I move on from this research phase & start finalizing both the libretto & the rest of the 'opera'. Those of you interested in this project can witness my feature-length quasi-documentary about the development of the software for it here: https://youtu.be/fiAVrCNtKvQ . Those of you who don't have the patience for something that long that doesn't have guns, tits, murder, or robbery in it can witness the considerably abridged version here: https://archive.org/details/ELIPabridged .
Since one of the (I-wd-hope UNNECESSARY) justifications for giving a shit about the extinction of languages is that every language is an expression of the unique world-view of its speakers & has words to express unique concepts, if only ones expressive of local knowledge unknown outside the environment in wch it's spoken - wch is more than enough from a botanist's perspective, e.g.. That makes Rheingold's "Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases" perfect for my interests.
Alas, one thing that always rubs me the wrong way are hired hand writers, hacks, as they're known. I had a friend who got a job as a writer of copy for coffee-table bks b/c a friend of his had had the job & had moved on from it & had recommended my friend as a replacement. Nepotism & croneyism RULES (unfortunately). Anyway, this friend had very expensive bks out w/ his name on the cover credited as the author. Now when I think of a real author, I think of someone who conceives of the bk themselves, does their own research AND writes the thing - then resisting 'corrections' from the publisher w/ a fervent tenacity. Cf:
"It all started with a friendly lunch. Jeremy Tarcher is the kind of publisher a writer dreams about. He isn't likely to merge with a new multinational conglomerate every other week, as book publishers are wont to do, and he actually likes to sit down with authors and talk about ideas. During one of our brainstorming sessions, Jeremy mentioned his desire to publish a lexicon of "untranslatable words" that don't exist in English but would add a new dimension to our lives if we were somehow to import them from their original languages." - pp 1-2
Ouch. Howard Rheingold is a hired hand, not a "real author" in the sense described above. Being in a position where a publisher even asks you to do something like this shows that the hired hand is a person of privilege moving in social circles that wd be more likely to put myself, a "real author", in jail - if only to keep the world safe for privilege. Oh, well.. Seem like harsh judgment? It's not like I haven't accumulated experiential reasons for such bold & bald statements.
Nonetheless, this bk, having been published in 1988, strikes me as a pioneering work in favor of cherishing languages & appreciating them & nursing them away from extinction. I respect it for that. It even seems to be trying to be 'popular' - wch I suppose might not be a bad idea if one's seriously concerned about endangered languages.
"This book is meant to be fun. Open it at random and see if you don't find something that will amuse you, entertain you, titillate your curiosity, tickle your perspective. But you should know that reading this book might have serious side effects at a deeper level. Even if you read one page as you stand in a bookstore, you are likely to find a custom or an idea that could change the way you think about the world. It was to do with the insidious way words mold thoughts." - p 1
Apparently "fun" goes hand-in-hand w/ not reading the whole thing, instead opening "it at random and see[ing] if you don't find something that will amuse you, entertain you" n'at. Somewhat recently, I wrote a bk review about a such that I'm somewhat of an expert on, the review was long. The author & I were slightly acquainted, I thought the bk was generally excellent. The author wrote me & sd something to the effect of "I assume your review can just be opened at random & read in brief excerpts?" to wch I replied: "NO, my review is linear & meant to be carefully read in its entirety from front-to-back."
My bks tend to present accumulative information that inform each new section, reading my explicative didactic writing is meant to be absorbed, not skimmed over like something stupid like an Andy Warhol portrait. I suspect that most readers aren't going to find They Have a Word for It "fun" simply b/c it's not a fictional narrative w/ sex & violence - the 2 poles of the conventional entertainment experience. A group of friends & I gave a concert of a piece of mine called "A Catamaran Animist Vigor" ( http://youtu.be/cn3U055X-2U ). There was a fair-sized audience of potentially open-minded people, some of whom probably had some expertise on music. At the end, I told people that that was my idea of entertainment & asked if anyone in the audience found the piece entertaining. Apparently no-one did. I remember performance poet Jackson Mac Low telling me that he meant for his works to be entertainment too but I'm not sure many audience members wd've agreed w/ him about that either.
"I even used a computer bulletin board to gather tips, and through it I met Corinne, my researcher, who extended my list of a couple of dozen words to a list of several hundred, from which I selected the entries for this book.
"For those of you who haven't dipped into the world of cybernetic virtual communities, a computer bulletin board is a computer that is hooked up to a telephone line. People who know that computer's telephone number can use their own computer to dial in to the bulletin board, then look through a menulike list of conversations that are stored in the bulletin board system (known in the acronym-happy computer world as a "BBS"), in order to find a topic of discussion that interests them." - p 3
WHEW! Remember that this bk was 1st published in 1988 so it was written in the mid 1980s. When I 1st studied computers in 1973 or shortly thereafter, I don't think I ever laid hands on a computer, I just learned how to write flow-charts. I started having friends in the 1980s w/ computers but they were somewhat rare. I, personally, didn't have an email address until 1996 & I had to go to the library to check my email b/c I didn't have a set-up at home that cd support such activity. It wasn't until 1997 that I had a computer that I cd use for connecting to the internet & that was thru dial-up. Dial-up was vvvveeeeerrrrrrrryyyyyy slooooooooowwwwwww. Then I progressed to DSL & most recently to FIOS & wireless.
Anyway, the point is that even tho this bk was 1st published a mere 29 yrs ago it's explaining something that can be done much more efficiently thru a search engine that almost everyone in many if not most countries are likely to have access to on their phones. That's truly mind-boggling.. - &, yet, how many people w/ access to this incredible resource actually use it for much of anything? I quote from the most recent review I wrote before this one:
"Given that I've been working on an 'opera' about endangered languages for the last 20 months (see a documentary about the work-in-progress here: https://youtu.be/fiAVrCNtKvQ ), the following section was of particular interest to me. The narrator comes upon some locals & attempted to engage them in conversation:
""I asked them casually about the fishing; but, instead of answering, they just shook their heads silently, and stared at me. I repeated the question, addressing more particularly a great, gaunt fellow at my elbow; yet again I received no answer. Then the man turned to a comrade and said something rapidly in a language that I did not understand; and, at once, the whole crowd of them fell to jabbering in what, after a few moments, I guessed to be pure Irish." - p 3
"""Yabbering" and "jabbering" are interesting words. They show up all over the English-speaking world whenever a speaker feels like sneering at animals or a minority people. Look up "jabber" in the Oxford English Dictionary, and you'll find quotations in which the term applies to monkeys, Flemish servants, seabirds, and Jews. It often betrays contempt, the dictionary observes, for "the speaking of a language which is unintelligible to the hearer."" - p 21, Mark Abley's Spoken Here - Travels Among Threatened Languages
"In honor of the 'jabber' that the narrator couldn't understand, I've decided to create a dialog in Irish esp for this bk review. Isn't that clever of me?:
"An gceapann tú go bhfuil an duine seo díreach jabbering? Nó an dóigh leat go bhfuil sé ag labhairt teanga i ndáiríre nach bhfuil cuid mhaith príobháideach ann? Tá sé deacair a rá, nach bhfuil sé? Is cosúil go gcailltear é ionas go bhféadfadh sé a bheith míchothromaithe go meabhrach freisin. An gceapann tú go bhfuil sé ag iarraidh iarracht a dhéanamh linn a ithe? Nó mátálann lenár mhná? B'fhéidir gurb é an norm is dóigh a thagann sé as an tslí sin. - Irish
"Now, if you don't speak Irish & you're not a lazy good-for-nothing piece of shit that emits more methane than the oxygen you breath in can replace then you'll copy the above paragraph into an Irish-to-English (if that's your preferred language) translator & find out what I've written. C'm'on, it'll only take a few minutes, why not take advantage of these translation programs? WE ARE SO DAMNED LUCKY TO LIVE IN A TIME WHEN THEY EXIST!! Really."" - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rheingold's disclaimer-like honesty is welcome:
"I am not a linguist, and this book is not an attempt to provide rigorous evidence for one linguistic hypothesis or another. But when I did some reading about the linguistic theory known as the Whorfian hypothesis, I began to understand the formal underpinnings of the phenomenon I had come to know through sheer iteration of examples. In light of these theories about the influence of thought upon language, I began to see this book as something quite different from the other books about unusual words." - pp 4-5
"If you want to change the way people think, you can educate them, brainwash them, bribe them, drug them. Ot you can teach them a few carefully chosen new words." - p 5
But even more welcome is his emphasis on teaching "carefully chosen new words." But like all things that 'might be good for people' introducing new concepts means wrapping them in same old same old sugar pills. If They Have a Word for It had been titled They Killed Babies Over One Word & was a lurid tale of drug addiction, rape, & child abuse with the ONE WORD introduced as an incredibly horrific surprise ending to a tale of total degradation then, maybe, a few people might remember the word.
"We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds—and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement to organize it this way—an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language.
"The words quoted above were written by Benjamin Lee Whorf, an expert on American Indian languages. This passage from Language, Thought and Reality is the heart of the theory that has come to be known as the Whorfian hypothesis, which asserts that the world is experienced in different ways by different linguistic communities and proposes that the differences in language actually cause the differences in the way the linguistic communities think." - pp 5-6
Now the last sentence above brings up an interesting issue for me: What came 1st? The language or the worldview? As w/ the chicken & the egg, there doesn't strike me as being an acceptable simple answer. Some might claim that a worldview can't exist w/o a language to formulate it. I tend to think that feelings & intuition are pre-lingual & that they can formulate worldviews.
Let's say that you live in an environment where there're rattlesnakes. You may know that they can potentially kill you w/ their poison but that they're mostly likely to bite if you're perceived as a threat. It's not like rattlesnakes bite everything in their vicinity all day long. If they did, THEY wdn't live long. Now let's say you're a pre-lingual creature living near rattlesnakes but not threatened by them b/c you're not a threat to THEM. Doesn't THAT shape yr worldview? THEN, as language is born w/in yr ancestors, isn't there the chance that the language's worldview will partially grow out of that instinctual knowledge?
SO, maybe, just maybe, I'm arguing that pre-lingual states of mind shape worldviews that shape language that, in turn, further shapes the worldview. Once worldview & language coexist they inevitably shape each other simultaneously & feelings & intuition & whatnot are in there too.
I am a Whorfian hylozoist - not that that combination of words necessarily pre-exists my writing them.
"If the more familiar Romance languages seem under-represented, and the esoteric languages like Bantu, Kiriwana, or Navajo offered in abundance, it is because some people from obscure linguistic groups have come up with words that represent powerful ideas." - p 9
Is that what it is? Rheingold's readership is going to be mainly English speakers &, therefore, people more familiar w/ Romance language ideas than ones from other cultures. The mere fact that they're not likely to be familiar w/ the ideas in "Bantu, Kiriwana, or Navajo" is enuf to 'justify' exposing them/us to them. I'm thankful for that. I prefer not to be willfully ignorant. In general, I like Rheingold's attitude:
"This book differs from other amusing and intriguing collections of unusual words because these words are meant to be used. Some will make you see things differently, many will help you show others how to see in new ways. Don't worry about strict pronunciation. Go ahead and make these words an active part of your vocabulary. It is unlikely that a Kiriwina-speaking Trobriand islander will jump into your conversation to correct you. And if a person fluent in Navajo catches you in a slight mispronunciation, appreciation of your efforts will surely outweigh any reproach for your accent. Don't let the fear of criticism by the bores and Korinthenkackers (chapter five) affect you. You will find a confident power well up when you muster the courage to help expand the scope of out language." - p 10
THERE IS NO DEFINITIVE PRONUNCIATION OF ANY WORD. There, I've sd it, I've uttered what wd be blasphemy to the pompous, the pretentious. Well, don't fuck 'em (as opposed to "Fuck 'Em"). The pronunciation of a word is determined by who uses it. If you understand what they're saying then that pronunciation is ok for you. If you don't understand, ask them to repeat it & listen more intently. Sooner or later, you'll probably figure it out between the 2 of you if you get the chance. I remember being in a Scottish Fish'n'Chips shop & being asked by the counter-person what I wanted. I didn't understand a word but I knew what the context implied. It took me awhile to adapt to the Scots accent.. - but that didn't make it wrong - for either of us.
Is it more correct to say "Boo-lay" or "Boo-lez"? More corrected to say "Pen-der-reck-ee" or Pen-der-retz-ski"? I'd favor the pronunciation in the country that the person's from, if I know what that pronunciation is, but in a pinch either will do for me.
"Human beings . . . are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. . . . The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is, to a large extent, unconsciously built up on the language habits of a group. . . . We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.
"Edward Sapir, The Relation of Habitual Thought and Behavior to Language" - p 13
Indeed? Imagine a child raised only on war words. What wd those words be w/o context? If those war words were used in non-warlike situations wd the child still be completely war-like? In other words, IMO, it's not just the words, it's also the feelings that accompany their use. What if a mother were to say: "I'll bomb the fuck out of you you inferior species" to their child as they rock them to sleep or suckle them? Imagine "real world" written as 'real world' or punned as 'reel world'.
I think of Jacob Wasserman's Caspar Hauser (1928) & of Werner Herzog's film Kaspar Hauser (1974) & of Paul Auster's City of Glass (1985) & of Umberto Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language (1995) - in other words, I think of the stories about children deprived of language as experiments to see whether there's any sort of language inherent w/in them. Of course, I'm addressing exceptions here & Sapir's addressing generalities.
Since Rheingold is neither the originator of this bk or the main researcher, his main function seems to be to organize, generalize, & comment. Each chapter has a theme, the 1st is "Human Family Affairs - People Words". The following quote will give the reader an idea of how he introduces the theme:
"On Easter Island, the words hakamaroo and tingo refer to different kinds of outrageous borrowing behavior. The Yiddish words tsuris and nakhes refer to two extreme emotions that only your son or daughter can invoke in you." - p 14
I'm less interested in Rheingold's philosophical contextualizing than I am in the actual words - wch, fortunately, are in sufficient abundance:
" ho'oponopono (Hawaiian)
Solving a problem by talking it out. [noun]"
[..]
"A ho'oponopono (HO-OH-poh-no-poh-no) is a social gathering and healing process that combines the functions of a religious ceremony, group therapy, family counseling session, town-hall meeting, and small-claims court." - p 16
B/c of word limits, the review is cut off here. You can read the full review, "They Have a Word for "It"", here: https://www.goodreads.com/story/show/...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 28, 2020
The ultimate pleasure for word freaks and linguistics junkies.
September 9, 2013
Pretty good overall. Some of the featured words have actually entered mainstream English usage (e.g. "wabi-sabi", "mantra", "zeitgeist", and "schadenfreude") in the ~30 years since this book was written, and it's fun to think that not so long ago they were foreign and novel. Will any of the other words in the book become mainstream in the next ~30 years? I, for one, will be doing my best to use and spread these words: "esprit de l'escalier", the clever remark that come to mind when it is too late to utter it; "fusto", a man who like to flex his muscles and dress provocatively"; "yugen", an awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep and mysterious for words"; and "schlimmbesserung", a so-called improvement that makes things worse.
Some of the featured words/phrases don't seem like they are expressing anything that we don't already have a word or phrase for in English (e.g. "bustarella", a cash bribe), and other words/phrases don't seem like they would ever, EVER, be needed in American life (e.g. "nadi", to temporarily inhabit another dimension). That isn't a big deal, it was still nice to read through them, but I definitely got the feeling that some of this was filler to meet a particular page count.
Some of the featured words/phrases don't seem like they are expressing anything that we don't already have a word or phrase for in English (e.g. "bustarella", a cash bribe), and other words/phrases don't seem like they would ever, EVER, be needed in American life (e.g. "nadi", to temporarily inhabit another dimension). That isn't a big deal, it was still nice to read through them, but I definitely got the feeling that some of this was filler to meet a particular page count.
February 7, 2018
This book is quite informative, yet even not half as funny as the author had promised.
The author mentions 9 phrases of Polish origin and he manages to make spelling errors in 6 of them:
- "dozywocie" - should be "dożywocie" with a "ż" instead of "z",
- "uspolecnić" - should be "uspołecznić",
- "zalatwić" - should be "załatwić",
- "praca spoteczna" - should be "praca społeczna", with a "ł" instead of "t",
- "zalatwić po znajomo'sju" - should be "załatwić po znajomości",
- "Kraków" is spelled correctly, but "Gdansk" is not (should be "Gdańsk").
The only Polish words spelled correctly in this book (apart from the city of "Kraków") are "hart ducha" and "fucha" - perhaps because they lack foreign diacritical marks. However, their meaning has not been grasped very well by the author. "[...] to do something poorly, to bungle a job" - that's a "fuszerka", not "fucha". Also, "hart ducha" does not mean "hard spirit", it means "fortitude".
I would give this book 0 stars, had it not been for the delightful description of the "Korinthenkacker" :D From now on I'm going to educate every Korinthenkacker I know that there is a word describing their obnoxious behavior.
The author mentions 9 phrases of Polish origin and he manages to make spelling errors in 6 of them:
- "dozywocie" - should be "dożywocie" with a "ż" instead of "z",
- "uspolecnić" - should be "uspołecznić",
- "zalatwić" - should be "załatwić",
- "praca spoteczna" - should be "praca społeczna", with a "ł" instead of "t",
- "zalatwić po znajomo'sju" - should be "załatwić po znajomości",
- "Kraków" is spelled correctly, but "Gdansk" is not (should be "Gdańsk").
The only Polish words spelled correctly in this book (apart from the city of "Kraków") are "hart ducha" and "fucha" - perhaps because they lack foreign diacritical marks. However, their meaning has not been grasped very well by the author. "[...] to do something poorly, to bungle a job" - that's a "fuszerka", not "fucha". Also, "hart ducha" does not mean "hard spirit", it means "fortitude".
I would give this book 0 stars, had it not been for the delightful description of the "Korinthenkacker" :D From now on I'm going to educate every Korinthenkacker I know that there is a word describing their obnoxious behavior.
July 28, 2012
This is the book that spawned a number of "top ten" style lists on the internet, even though it was written in 1988, when the idea of a BBS had to be carefully explained. Like those top-ten lists, I didn't read this book cover-to-cover. I read the introduction and skimmed the rest. Although there is a nice list of "untranslatable" words, I didn't care enough to read the description and suggested usage for each one.
My favorite is yoin, which is Japanese, and a cousin of "nostalgia", but can be applied to present and future events as well as past events. I've felt this a dozen times in Japan, and a few times here in North America. It's like walking down a street for the first time on a warm evening and having a sense that this moment is the moment that you may be nostalgic about in the future.
My favorite is yoin, which is Japanese, and a cousin of "nostalgia", but can be applied to present and future events as well as past events. I've felt this a dozen times in Japan, and a few times here in North America. It's like walking down a street for the first time on a warm evening and having a sense that this moment is the moment that you may be nostalgic about in the future.
December 10, 2012
a misguided appropriation of words that would have stood alone just fine if rheingold could have presented them with adequate context. instead, he barely explained the words' original meanings and then suggested situations in which americans could make use of these words. if one were to actually do as instructed and use an unfamiliar word to lighten the mood during a tense situation, without any explanation, one would sound like a condescending jerk to one's friends and family. this 'lexicon' unintentionally shows little respect for its audience, which could have been trusted to draw conclusions without overt guidance. i think i've already mentioned the work's lack of regard for non-anglophone cultures by means of overediting.
Read
December 7, 2010This is a book full of interesting concepts that can be expressed in other languages using a single word but which we don't have a word for in English. It's a really good browsey type of a read.
It was first published in 1988 and includes a few words that I've learnt since then but I'm not sure how unusualthey were in English in 1988. Schadenfreude was one of thewords that I recognised.
My favourite so far is the Swedish word uffda which is to "ouch!" what"bless you!" is to sneezing. Much betterthan "oooh, that sounded like it hurt!" isn't it?
August 23, 2011
It's not a dictionary in any real sense of the word--the terms aren't even alphabetical!--and I agree with the other commenters who said that the anthropology's more than a bit shaky. It's a fun collection of unusual words, though, all of which should be be better known, from "sitike" to "orenda", "mokita" to "biritululo". What do they mean? if you don't know...you'll just have to get a copy of the book.
December 20, 2016
I expected more from this book. The words are usually interesting, but some of the explanations are long-winded (the chapter on dreams is one that I struggled to get through in particular) and some of the words/phrases are translatable, such as earworm (though I guess that became common after the book? But still, it's not the same case as words where you can't even translate the individual parts) and a couple of others where there are translations that work well enough.
December 14, 2014
It’s taken me a year to read this book, not because it wasn’t good, but because it featured some concepts from other cultures that I found truly hard to absorb. It’s written with a North American audience rather than a British audience in mind and this too sometimes made it interesting to me. Some words I don’t think I’ll ever use and some I’m delighted to have found. It’s given me some wonderful words from the German language, such as feierabend, drachenfutter and zwishenraum.
July 30, 2016
When I originally began collecting books on "untranslatable words," I swore by this one. In retrospect, it is but one linguistic perspective of a much larger and well-known phenomena of linguistic pluralism--one that is somewhat one-dimensional.
It should still be given credit to its effort in collecting unique vocabulary--although some are very loosely translated and taken out of context, despite the author's good intentions.
It should still be given credit to its effort in collecting unique vocabulary--although some are very loosely translated and taken out of context, despite the author's good intentions.
February 15, 2008
The Italians have a word for when you take a "sick" day on the Monday between a weekend and a Tuesday holiday... this and many more gems are to be found in this volume. An amusing dip-in-and-chuckle sort of reference work.
March 12, 2008
Great little reference book to have around. Open to any page to read up on something pretty interesting from another culture and later force your new nugget into a conversation to let everyone know you're a smart cookie.
March 22, 2008
Oh, big fun! As a wordie, I find endless delight in memorizing the entries from this book and flinging them out when the proper occasion arises. Even if you are not the flinging type, these words are too good to be missed, as are Mr. Rheingold's delightful interpretations of their meanings.
October 10, 2011
quante volte avremmo voluto esprimere un pensiero, un'idea, una sensazione, ma non ci siamo riusciti perche' la nostra lingua non ce lo permette?
Le parole giuste esistono, solo che forse non sono nella nostra lingua. Come mamihlapinatapei, ad esempio...
Le parole giuste esistono, solo che forse non sono nella nostra lingua. Come mamihlapinatapei, ad esempio...
August 5, 2012
SO interesting if you like words (i know that sounds silly but i know what i mean). if you like using words that not everybody is aware of, or even just like learning new words, or are just curious, read it!
May 5, 2007
A thesaurus for words that you didn't know you needed until you read this book.
January 22, 2008
Interesting but more of a reference book than anything else.
Want to read
February 11, 2008A friend has this book. It is fascinating. I've got to get it.
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