In Other Words
Description
"A delightful treasure house, literally a thesaurus, of linguistic marvels." --from the foreword by bestselling author Simon Winchester
A colorfully illustrated collection of more than ninety untranslatable words and phrases and the unique insights they offer into the cultures they come from.
Ever racked your brain for a word you're convinced should exist, yet is inexplicably absent from the dictionary? All languages have their limitations-should English fall short, the expression may lie elsewhere. That's where this book comes in: a quirky, international lexicon of linguistic gems that capture cultural untranslatables with satisfying precision.
Take for example the Japanese yoko meshi, "a meal eaten sideways," describing the experience of trying to communicate in an alien tongue, or mono-no-aware, the appreciation of life's sadness. From the distinctive coziness of the Danish hygge, to the unrestrained dis of the Mayan bol ("in-laws" and "stupidity"), to the profound collectivism of the Zulu concept of ubuntu (roughly, "I AM because WE ARE"), these mots justes are grouped according to language and prefaced with insightful overviews of the relevant cultures by linguist Christopher J. Moore.
Embellished with 20 entertaining new untranslatable words and phrases and 90 characterful color illustrations by Lan Truong, and with a foreword by Simon Winchester, In Other Words is amusing, profound, and unputdownable--a gorgeously packaged gift book to entertain even the most well-versed polyglot with marvels of language from around the world.
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Persons
Philip Gooden read English at Magdalen College, Oxford, and then taught at secondary level for many years. In 2001 he became a full-time writer. Recently published is Who's Whose?: A No-Nonsense Guide to Easily Confused Words (Bloomsbury, 2004). He is also the author of the Nick Revill series, a sequence of historical mysteries based in Elizabethan London and set around Shakespeare's Globe theatre. Titles so far published are Sleep of Death, Death of Kings, The Pale Companion (shortlisted for the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award in 2002), Alms for Oblivion and Mask of Night. A contributor to various short story anthologies, Philip Gooden also works as an editor, most recently on the Mammoth Book of Literary Anecdotes and a new edition of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World for Penguin Classics. He lives in Bath where he is currently working on his next novel, An Honourable Murderer.
Christopher J. Moore holds degrees in modern languages and linguistics. He is the author of several books, including a major anthology of Gaelic oral poetry. He lives in France and Spain.