I Never Knew There Was a Word for It - Adam Jacot De Boinod [40]
siete (Spanish, Central America) seven (a right-angled tear)
Mein Rad hat eine Acht (German) my bike has an eight (a buckled wheel)
se mettre sur son trente et un (French) to put yourself on your thirty-one (to get all dressed up)
ein Gesicht wie 7 Tage Regenwetter haben (German) to have a face like seven days of rain (a long face)
Kissing time
The adult understanding of the French number soixante-neuf (69) is well known. Less familiar is the other meaning of quatre-vingt-huit (88) – a kiss.
Take your time
Not everyone sees time in terms of past, present and future. The Kipsigis of the Nile region have three types of past tense: today’s past, yesterday’s past and the distant past. Several American Indian languages divide the past tense into the recent past, remote past and mythological past; other languages have different definitions:
pal (Hindi) a measure of time equal to twenty-four seconds
ghari (Hindi) a small space of time (twenty-four minutes)
tulat (Malay) the third day hence
xun (Chinese) a period of ten days (in a month) or a decade (in someone’s life)
jam karet (Indonesian) rubber time (an indication that meetings may not necessarily start on time)
Can’t say exactly when
In Hindi, the word for yesterday, kal, is the same as that for tomorrow (only the tense of the attached verb tells you which). And in Punjabi parson means either the day before yesterday or the day after tomorrow.
Time of day
Around the world different cultures have created highly specific loosely clock-related vocabulary that divides up the day. The Zarma people of Western Africa use wete to cover mid-morning (between nine and ten); the Chinese wushi is from eleven to one; and the Hausa (of Nigeria) azahar takes in the period from one-thirty to around three. The Samoan word afiafi covers both late afternoon and evening, from about 5 p.m. till dark. They call the period right after sunset afiafi po; this is then followed after a couple of hours by po, the dead of night. Of the various expressions for dusk, perhaps the most evocative is the French entre chien et loup – literally, between the dog and the wolf.
Elevenses
Dutch (and other Germanic languages) confusingly uses half twaalf for 11.30. While in Africa they are more long-winded for this specific time of day:
baguo gbelleng pie ne yeni par miti lezare ne pie (Dagaari Dioula, Burkina Faso)
isikhathi yisigamu emva kwehora leshumi nanye (Zulu)
metsotso e mashome a meraro ka mora hora ya leshome le motso e mong (Sesotho, Southern Africa)
Shouting the distance
Krosa is Sanskrit for a cry, and thus has come to mean the distance over which a man’s call can be heard, roughly two miles. In the central forests of Sri Lanka calculations of distance are also made by sound: a dog’s bark indicates a quarter of a mile; a cock’s crow something more; and a hoo is the space over which a man can be heard when shouting the word at the highest pitch of his voice. While in the Yakut language of Siberia, kiosses represents a specific distance calculated in terms of the time it takes to cook a piece of meat.
Tip to toe
Parts of the body have long been used to define small distances – the foot in the imperial system of measuring, for example. The Zarma people of Western Africa find the arm much more useful: kambe kar is the length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger and gande is the distance between two outstretched arms. Elsewhere we find:
dos (Hmong, China) from the thumb tip to the middle-finger tip
muku (Hawaiian) from the fingers of one hand to the elbow of the opposite arm when it is extended
sejengkal (Malay) the span between the tips of the stretched thumb and little finger
dangkal (Kapampangan, Philippines) between thumb and forefinger
The Micmac calendar
The Mikmawisimk language of the Micmac Indians is spoken by some eight thousand people in Canada and the USA. Their twelve months all have highly evocative names:
English Mikmawisimk Literal translation
January Punamujuikús the cod are spawning