Re: meaning of tingo

retrosorter wrote:

I just finished browsing through a book entitled "The Meaaning of Tingo
and other extraordinary words from around the world'' by Adam Jacot de
Boinod and was immediately struck by some errors he has committed. For
example, he states "The French invented the word ordinateur supposedly
in order to avoid using the first two syllables of the word computer
(con is slang for vagina and pute for whore)." This claim is utter
rubbish. He also defines the Yiddish/Hebrew "tsuris" as "grief and
trouble from a child," but the term is definitely not restricted or
even primarily related to children as in the word "nakhes."

My lack of fluency in many other languages precludes me from a making
judgements on other claims and I was wondering if anyone can cite other
examples that show that the author's scholarship is wanting.

This book came up a few days ago in connection with the 'Albanian words
for eyebrows'. I agree he's hardly a scholar, butI think the kind of
serious tone you're using would be inappropriate. The book is just
finger food and doesn't pretend to be much more. The author does invite
corrections (and additions) via his web site
(www.themeaningoftingo.com), but how seriously he would take you I don't
know.

Just to take your two examples: I'm not sure how you could establish
that the "con/pute" story was "utter rubbish". Con and pute do exist,
and people do sometimes avoid words because of undesirable homophony.
What you could do, though, is point out that this is part of a much
larger pattern of creating French alternatives to avoid borrowing from
English.

With "tsuris" you have an example of something he does a lot -- adding
specificity to the definition which is not really there. Another
example is Hawaiian 'a'ama, which he says means "someone who speaks
rapidly, hiding their meaning from one person whilst communicating it to
another". Now if I look in Pukui & Elbert (the standard dictionary), I
don't find any such meaning. 'A'ama is just a reduplicated form of 'ama,
which means something like "talkative". Now Adam Jacot de Boinod (the
author) may have some independent source of information on Hawaiian, but
unfortunately there's no list of references, so...

Another Hawaiian example makes a different point: ho'oponopono "solving
a problem by talking it out". Now this is a causative from ponopono
"neat, tidy, in order, etc.", so the verb has meanings like "sort out,
tidy up, arrange, regulate..." BUT ALSO "Mental cleansing, the old
Hawaiian method of clearing the mind of a sick person by family
discussion, examination, and prayer". Now this may be what AJdB was
trying to get across with his bland paraphrase "solving a problem by
talking it out", but (and this is not the only case) it seems to me the
real meaning is actually more interesting than what he gives.

I had the same feeling with his citation of Russian dozvonit'sa "ring (a
doorbell or telephone) until somebody answers", which is not analyzed at
all, thus missing the generality of the use of the prefix do- to mean
'do something until a result or completion is achieved'.

Cook Islands Maori 'o'onitua "to speak evil of someone in their absence"
-- 'is a pretty universal curse', he comments. But he doesn't mention
the formation of this word (which is given explicitly in the dictionary
he got it from), from 'o'oni "bite" and tua "back", so that it's either
a calque on English "backbite" or an example of a very specific
world-wide idiom.

These are just from the first few pages. I could go on. But I don't
think I will.

Ross Clark
.

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