Rich Talk

Some favorite words of Stockholm University linguist Mikael Parkvall, from his Limits of Language (2006):

  • klunen (Dutch): “to walk or run overland with skates on (usually from one body of frozen water to another)”
  • aɣone (Kuot): “to drink from a bottle in such a fashion that drool trickles from the mouth back into the bottle”
  • fringsen (German): “to steal coal from railway wagons or potatoes from fields in order to survive”
  • knedlikový (Czech): “rather partial to dumplings”
  • qamigartuk (Yup’ik): “he goes seal-hunting with a small sled and kayak in the spring”
  • baleŋga (Chavacano): “excessive swinging of arms while walking”
  • kallsup (Swedish): “a gulp of water that a bather accidentally inhales”
  • googly (English): “(of an off-breaking cricket ball) disguised by the bowler with an apparent leg-break action”

Gunwinggu, spoken in northwestern Australia, uses different verbs to describe the hopping of a black wallaroo (Macropus bernardus) (kamurlbardme), the hopping of an agile wallaby (Macropus agilis) (kalurlhlurme), the hopping of a male antilopine wallaroo (Macropus antilopinus) (kamawudme), and the hopping of a female antilopine wallaroo (kadjalwahme).

| Language

In a Word

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Coulter_-_San_Francisco.jpg

bibliotaph
n. a hoarder of books

In the rare book collection of the archives at Caltech is a copy of Adrien-Marie Legendre’s 1808 text on number theory. It comes from the collection of Eric Temple Bell, who taught mathematics at Caltech from 1926 to 1953. Inside the book is an inscription in Bell’s handwriting:

This book survived the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 18 April, 1906. It was buried with about 600 others, in a vacant lot, before the fire reached the spot. The house next door to the lot fell upon the cache; the tar from the roof baked the 4 feet of dirt, covering the books, to brick, and incinerated all but 4 books, of which this is one. Signed: E. T. Bell. Book buried just below Grace Church, at California and Stockton Streets. House number 729 California Street.

During the Great Fire of London in 1666, Samuel Pepys came upon Sir William Batten burying his wine in a pit in his garden. Pepys “took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of” and later buried “my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.” I don’t know whether he ever recovered them.

| Language · Literature · Science & Math

Sound Language

http://openclipart.org/detail/169725/pow-vintage-comic-book-sound-effect-by-studio_hades

Ernst Havlik’s (1981) Lexikon der Onomatopoien is an entire dictionary consisting only of comic strip sound effects. It contains an introductory analysis, 2222 onomatopoeic items, and 111 illustrations. The section on kissing, for instance, contains glork, schmatz, schuic, shluk, smack, smurp and shmersh — quite a poetic collection in itself. More unexpected are woin and töff, both of which are intended to represent the sound of a car horn. A breaking car apparently goes tata in at least one source, and from a ‘scientific laboratory,’ one gets to hear foodle, grink, and sqwunk. Perhaps even more interesting are the sounds floop, flop and flomp, which represent the sound of a bra being taken off. Anyone prejudiced against the genre as such, may see it as a confirmation that the sections on ‘violence’ take up 17 pages, while that devoted to ‘thinking’ consists of a mere five lines.

— Mikael Parkvall, Limits of Language, 2006

| Language

All Greek

Eugene Ulrich offered this paragraph in Word Ways: The Journal of Recreational Linguistics. What’s unusual about it?

The problem with antisocial sorority girls is men and pals. Such girls may wish for neurotic men to go with them for laughs. But male pals lend ornament, worn for handy visual flair. So the pals it is; they form an authentic proxy when visible, and prudish girls may also dispel their own rigid neuroticism with such chaps.

Click for Answer
| Language

In a Word

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLA_metmuseum_Red_Sunset_on_the_Dnieper_Arkhip_Ivanovich_Kuindzhi.jpg

exulant
adj. living in exile

Homeless, exiled, I climb Sin-Ping tower.
It is late on in the dying year,
The sun is declining in the sky
And the dark river runs gloomy and slow.

A cloud moves across the forests on the mountain;
Wild geese fly off down the river.
Up here I can see for ten thousand miles,
But I do not see the end of my sorrows.

— Li Po, banished from the Chinese capital, circa 757

| Language · Poems