Re: Looking for a specific word

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> Nigel Greenwood wrote:
> >
> > Jakanapes wrote:
> > > I read about this word a few years ago and now can't find any
> > > references to it. I believe it comes from a South Pacific tribe and
> > > describes a very specific occurance.
> > >
> > > As near as I can recall, the definition goes like this..
> > >
> > > The uncomfortable silence between two people when they both know
> > > something that needs to be said, but that neither wants to be the first
> > > one to say it.
> >
> > 2 suggestions, obtained by googling "untranslatable awkwardness":
> >
> > "There is a word from New Guinea called 'mokita' which is the truth
> > that everybody knows about but nobody speaks. An open secret. Everybody
> > knows that So and So is fooling around with So and So. But nobody talks
> > about it.
>
> "A word from New Guinea"? There are close to a thousand languages just
> in the Papua half of the island of New Guinea.

This appears to be attributed to Kiriwina, an Austronesian language from
the southeast. Probably popularized by Howard Rheingold's book _They
Have A Word For It_, which collects words from dozens of languages that
don't have an English equivalent.

This is the flip side of the "They Don't Have A Word For It" game --
from which, however, people often try to draw important morals. Somebody
recently pointed me to a nice piece by Geoffrey Nunberg, in which he
gently points out the absurdity of this practice, even when people have
their facts right.

http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/compromise.html

Ross Clark
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Congratulation to this newsgroup!
    ... > speakers, as have several other Polynesian outliers. ... New Guinea has many hundreds of languages. ... > described earlier in this thread as being rare. ... In New Guinea, some languages spoken by adjacent communities don't ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: Congratulation to this newsgroup!
    ... Anutan has survived for centuries with no more than a few hundred ... speakers, as have several other Polynesian outliers. ... New Guinea has many hundreds of languages. ... In New Guinea, some languages spoken by adjacent communities don't ...
    (alt.usage.english)
  • Re: deepfriedmars.com
    ... >> language and nobody speaks it its value is just about zero and ... Each of them has its own beauty. ... But there are also ugly languages which it's painful to hear spoken: ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: (BB11) Idea for next show
    ... My suggestion: 14 people from 14 different countries with 14 different languages. ... Nobody speaks anybody else's language. ...
    (rec.sport.pro-wrestling)