Dona - Yamana, Chile: to take lice from a person's head and squash between one's teeth.Oka/SHETE - Ndonga, Nigeria: urination difficulties caused by eating frogs before the rain has duly fallen.
Pisan Zapra - Malay: the time needed to eat a banana.
Physiggoomai - Ancient Greek: excited by eating garlic.
Baffona - Italian: an attractive moustachioed woman.
Layogenic - Tagalog, Philippines: a person who is only goodlooking from a distance.
Rhwe - South Africa: to sleep on the floor without a mat while drunk and naked.
Shvitzer - Yiddish: someone who sweats a lot, especially a nervous seducer.
Gattara - Italian: a woman, often old and lonely, who devotes herself to stray cats.
Creerse La Ultima Coca-COLA EN EL DESIERTO - Central American Spanish: to have a very high opinion of oneself, literally to "think one is the last Coca-Cola in the desert".
Vrane Su Mu Popile Mozak - Croatian: crazy, literally "cows have drunk his brain".
What would the world be, once bereft of wet and wildness?
Let them be left, O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins
Thursday, November 08, 2007
schadenfreude
This is a rather amusing list of words in foreign languages that have no equivalent in English. Not only linguistically but conceptually--at least I don't think I've ever experienced Oka Shete before. I could be wrong.