The one Samoan word on the list, fa'amiti, isn't a word I learned when I was there, but what is describes is accurate. That is, people did certainly call other people over by making kissy noises at them, without the connotation it would have here.
Hey look! Fucha. The Portuguese have a word for blogger!
There is a word for the fold of skin under your chin (alang - it's Nicaraguan)
I thought our word for this was "wattle."
or 'double chin', depending on exactly what's being described.
on the other hand the one Brazilian word on the list, sacanagem is a very popular word, but I've never seen it used in the very specific sense they define it.
(fwiw, I'd translate it as "bullshit", but not as harsh)
This isone of those books that really irritates Languaghat.
Didn't SB previously note that the "x # of Inuit words for snow" for all of the high values of x which are normally batted about?
The Eskimos have no word for snow, since it's so pervasive. Sort of like Being, which most only philisophers even have a word for. SOmetimes they'll vaguely refer to "that white shit".
No, they have a dozen words for penguin poo, depending on whether it's being used to thicken soup, as glue, to rub in the eyes in the morning, as a wedding gift, etc., etc. They don't use any of them much since penguins haven't shown up from the Antarctic yet.
the English equivalent of "Bakku-Shan" would be "bobfoc". It's an acronym standing for "body off Baywatch, face off Crimewatch".
bobfoc is fantastic. Koro, for what it's worth, is a real word -- and no matter how much your psychopathology professor tries to keep a straight face while teaching you about it, titters will abound.
"Kusukusu" is just "giggle," as far as I know. Suggests they're overdefining to make some of the words seem unique.
Yeah, but koro isn't Japanese, it's Makassarese. (But you know, Indonesia, Japan, what's the difference?)
Apparently if you feel a spot of koro coming on, all the guys around are supposed to help rub your cock so that it doesn't shrink away completely.
Only the guys though.
Zechpreller yes.
Agobilles no. (Googling tells me it's Normand dialect for useless things.)
My favorite is Bakku-Shan.
AKA'AKA'A Hawaiian
Skin peeling or falling off after either sunburn or heavy drinking.
Drinking?
I was wondering about that. I certainly saw lots of heavy drinking in Samoa, but never saw it result in peeling. Possibly the missing step is "drinking heavy enough that it results in falling asleep in the sun and getting sunburnt."
Not at all! I was prepared to meet the day by one and read lots of ethics!
The whole eskimo snow thing is just because eskimo is an agglutinative language. So you get these big long words that are just compounds of other ones.
Like the stereotypical German of jokes. You know, where pencil translates as the equivalent of "lineargraphitefilledwritingdevice".
All those eskimo snow 'words' are just "white snow", "grey snow", "blobby snow" etc. I gather that when they take into account single snow 'words', that they have about the same number as in English.
Scots, you won't be surprised to know, have 'extra' words for types of rain or rain-involving weather conditions.
'Smirr' is my favourite.
Yeah, you wouldn't belive the number of words we have here in North Carolina for pork and roadkill.
'Course the really impressive one, the one that trumps all fake-Eskimo stories, is the number of adjectives (phrasal or otherwise) for drunkeness that English has.
Smashed, mashed, monged, nutted, blootered, wasted, pissed, pished, hammered, wrecked, slaughtered, etc barely scraping the surface of the single word ones.