Bisan’s Reviews > The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words from around the World > Status Update

ak akce kara gun icindir (Turkish) white money for a black day (savings for a rainy day)

(Hawaiian) ku’u imu kalua loa a lo’ik’i: my long underground oven (the grave)

iwang wayaka (Ulwa, Nicaragua) a spirit that comes out after a person dies, makes noises and yet is never seen.
bodach (Scottish Gaelic) the ghost of an old man that comes down the chimney to terrorize children who have been naughty

avaler son bulletin de naissance (French) to swallow one’s birth certificate
Liebestod (German) dying for love or because of a romantic tragedy

Or is it that by luridly painting women as lustful, conniving men over the world have cleverly avoided any blame for their own adulterous behaviour? Even when they’re guilty, they try to keep the linguistic upper hand.

Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiyoh (Japanese) it means ‘this time next year let’s be laughing together’.
biodegradabile (Italian) someone who falls in love easily and often.

(italian) Sometimes a boy will say cibi cierre to a girl (CBCR). This is an
acronym of cresci bene che ripasso: ‘if you still look like that when you’ve grown up, I will come and pay you a call’

tragado como media de cartero (Colombian Spanish) being hopelessly in love (literally, swallowed like a postman’s sock)

mono-no-aware (Japanese) appreciating the sadness of existence

The Cantonese equivalent to ‘you’re as thick as two short planks’ is the equally graphic nie hochi yat gau faan gam, ‘you look like a clump of cooked rice’,