I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [12]
teplushka (Russian) a heated goods van used for carrying people
bottom-bottom wata wata (African Creole) a submarine
gung gung chi chuh (Chinese) a bus
vokzal (Russian) a railway station (named after Vauxhall in London)
voiture-balai (French) the last train or bus (literally, broom-vehicle as it sweeps up the latecomers)
Set of wheels
One particular form of transport is pre-eminent in the modern world: whether normal, or convertible (spider in Italian), or vintage (oldtimer in German). What lets most cars down, however, are the people driving them, be it the viande paraguero (Caribbean Spanish), the Sunday driver (literally, an umbrella stand); or the Gurtmuffel (German), someone who doesn’t wear a seat belt. Then, of course, there’s the way people drive:
sgasata (Italian) a sudden and violent acceleration
appuyer sur le champignon (French) to put one’s foot down (literally, to stamp on the mushroom)
Geisterfahrer (German), a person driving on the wrong side of the road
Road rage
Hazards are all too common, whether in the car …
desgomarse (Caribbean Spanish) to have bad tyres
ulykkesbilen (Danish) an ill-fated car
Blechlawine (German) a huge traffic jam (literally, a sheet-metal avalanche)
matadero (Spanish, Central America) a car scrapheap (literally, a slaughterhouse)
… or out of it. The French have the most evocative expressions to describe both the reckless pedestrian – viande à pneux, meat for tyres, and the knock suffered by a cyclist – l’homme au marteau, literally, the man with the hammer.
Apache cars
The Apache people of the USA name the parts of cars to correspond to parts of the body. The front bumper is daw, the chin or jaw; the front fender is wos, the shoulder; the rear fender is gun, the arm and hand; the chassis is chun, the back; the rear wheel is ke, the foot. The mouth is ze, the petrol-pipe opening. The nose is chee, the bonnet. The eyes are inda, the headlights. The forehead is ta, the roof.
The metaphorical naming continues inside. The car’s electrical wiring is tsaws, the veins. The battery is zik, the liver. The petrol tank is pit, the stomach. The radiator is jisoleh, the lung; and its hose, chih, the intestine. The distributor is jih, the heart.
False friends
punk (Japanese) flat tyre
chariot (French) trolley
rower (Polish) bicycle
fly (Danish) aeroplane
escape (Portuguese) car exhaust or gas leak
arrear (Spanish) to drive on
jam (Mongolian) road
Running on time
The Japanese have some fine vocabulary for trains: gaton gaton is an electric train; gotongoton describes trains rattling along; shoo shoo po po is the sound of a steam train; while kang kang kang is the noise of the level crossing. Kakekomi-josha describes all too vividly rushing onto a train to beat the closing doors, a common sight on Tokyo’s underground.
On reflection
Separatist
Many of the languages around the world are interrelated (for example, Spanish, French and Italian are all Latin languages), but by contrast, ‘isolate languages’ are those that do not appear to be related to any other at all. Some languages became isolate in historical times, after all their known relatives became extinct; the Piraha language, for example, spoken along a tributary of the Amazon, is the last surviving member of the Mura family of languages. Similar isolates include Burushaski, which is spoken in two Himalayan valleys; the Gilyak and Ket languages of Siberia; and Nivkh, a Mongolian language.
The Basque language Euskara is perplexing. It bears no resemblance at all to the languages of its surrounding countries. Some similarities with Georgian have made linguists think it could be related to languages from the Caucasus. Others have tried to relate it to non-Arabic languages from the north of Africa. A more likely hypothesis argues that Euskara developed where it is still spoken and has always been the language of the Basques, who were gradually surrounded by people speaking other unrelated languages.
It Takes All Sorts
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