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Bedside manner

Illness demands sympathy, but the Indonesian word besuk suggests that this is not always forthcoming. It means to refuse to visit a sick person. Possibly with good reason:

bawwal (Persian) one who pisses in bed

osurgan (Turkish) someone who farts a lot

dobol (Indonesian) to have a swollen anus

ra’ora’oa (Cook Islands Maori) to have swollen testicles

kepuyuh (Indonesian) to have to urinate

jerrkjerrk (Wagiman, Australia) diarrhoea

chiasse (French) runs induced by fear

Impatient?

Perhaps the most telling word in the lexicon of sickness is the Chinese word huiji-jiyi – to avoid following your doctor’s advice for fear of being recognized as the sufferer of a disease.

On reflection

Vowelless

The Tashlhiyt dialect of Berber (North Africa) is known for its vowelless words: tzgr, she crossed, and rglx, I locked. Among the longest are tkkststt, you took it off, and tftktstt, you sprained it. And if we accept ‘r’ as a consonant (which is debatable in Czech, as ‘l’ and ‘r’ function as sonorants and so fulfil the role of a vowel) then words consisting entirely of consonants are common in their language: krk, neck; prst, finger or toe; smrk, pine tree; smrt, death. Words beginning with five consonants are not unknown: ctvrt, quarter and ctvrtek, Thursday. Likewise in Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian there are: crkva, church; mrkva, carrot; trg, market and zrtva, vinegar.

From Cradle to Grave

xian zhang de meimao, bi bu shang hou zhang de huzi (Chinese)

the eyebrows that started growing first can’t compare with the beard that started growing later

In the family way

Pregnancy can be something of a mixed blessing:

mirkha (Quechuan, Peru) the freckles or spots on a woman’s face during pregnancy

waham (Arabic) the craving for certain foods during pregnancy

tafarrus (Persian) the fainting of a pregnant woman

Birth pains

When it comes to childbirth, English tends to be coy. There is no English equivalent for the Inuit word paggiq, which describes the flesh torn as a woman delivers a baby, nor for the Japanese chigobami – bites inflicted on a mother’s nipple by a suckling baby. As for the less painful aspects of giving birth, we lack the Indonesian word uek, the sound of a baby crying when being born, the very precise Ulwa word from Nicaragua, asahnaka, to hold a child on one’s hip with its legs straddling the hipbone facing the mother’s side, let alone the Persian term kundamoya, which is the hair a child is born with.

Birthing partner

The Inuit have a word tunumiaq which denotes the person who supports a pregnant woman’s back during labour.

First steps in the deep Pacific

In Rapa Nui (Easter Island) there are five detailed words to describe a baby’s early progress: kaukau is a newborn baby first moving its hands and feet; puepue is when it begins to distinguish people and objects; tahuri is when it starts to move from side to side; totoro is when it’s learned to crawl; mahaga is when it is able to stand by itself.

Toddling

English is strangely deficient when it comes to observing the many stages of development:

teete (Zarma, Nigeria) to teach a toddler how to walk

menetah (Indonesian) to help a little child walk by holding its hands to keep it in balance

pokankuni (Tulu, India) to learn by looking at others

keke (Hawaiian) a word of caution to children to cover their nakedness

Growing pains

The next few years are crucial:

polekayi (Tulu, India) writing in a large crooked hand as children tend to do

qiangda (Chinese) a race to be the first to answer a question

nylentik (Indonesian) to hit a child’s ear with the index finger

paski (Tulu, India) punishing a boy by making him alternate between standing and sitting with his arms crossed and both ears seized by his fingers

zhangjin (Chinese) the progress made in one’s intellectual or moral education

Polterabend (German) a stag party for both sexes at which crockery is broken celebrating the end of their single lives

ronin (Japanese) a student who has failed a university entrance examination