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Krungthephphramahanakhonbowonratanakosinmahinthara

yuthayamahadilokphiphobnovpharadradchataniburiromudo

msantisug

meaning: City of Angels, Great City and Residence of the Emerald Buddha, Impregnable City of the God Indra, Grand Capital of the World, Endowed with Nine Precious Gems, Abounding in Enormous Royal Palaces which resemble the Heavenly Abode where reigns the Reincarnated God, a City given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm.

It rather leaves the Welsh

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwillantysilioogofgoch

(meaning St Mary’s Church by the pool of the white hazel trees, near the rapid whirlpool, by the red cave of the Church of St Tysilio) in the shade.

A to Y

At the other end of the scale are three places called A (in Denmark, Norway and Sweden), and two more, in Alaska and France, called Y.

Toujours Tingo

1.

Getting Acquainted

bie shi rongyi; jian shi nan (Chinese)

parting is easy but meeting is difficult

Hamjambo

However good or bad we’re feeling inside, we still have to communicate with each other. We come out of our front door, see someone and adopt the public face. ‘How are you?’ ‘Awright, mate?’ we ask at home. Abroad, greetings seem somehow more exotic:

stonko? Muskogee (Oklahoma and Florida, USA)

ah chop? Aramaic (Maaloula, Syria)

oli? Koyo (Congo)

hamjambo? Kiswahili (South East Africa)

‘Fine, thanks!’ we reply. They say:

bare bra Norwegian

dagu dad Adyghe (North Caucasus, Russia)

bash Kurdi (Iran, Iraq)

How is your nose?

The Onge of the Andaman Islands don’t ask ‘How are you?’ but ‘How is your nose?’ The correct response is to reply that you are ‘heavy with odour’. Around the world there are numerous other ways to meet and greet:

cead mile failte (Irish) one hundred thousand welcomes

añjalikā (Pali, India) the raising of the hands as a sign of greeting

inga i moana (Gilbertese, Oceania) to greet with open arms but soon tire of

er-kas (Pahlavi, Iran) hands under the armpits in respectful salutation

abruzo (Latin American Spanish) the strong hug men give each other whenever they meet

lamuka usalali (Mambwe, Zambia) to greet somebody lying down on one’s back (a salute generally given to chiefs)

‘And this is …’

The Scots have a useful word, tartle, which means to hesitate in recognizing a person or thing, as happens when you are introducing someone whose name you can’t quite remember. They are not the only ones to suffer from this infuriating problem:

ciniweno (Bemba, Zambia) a thing, the name of which one does not remember

joca (Portuguese) thingumajig, thingumabob

Tongue-tied

That little dilemma solved, not everyone finds it easy to continue:

byatabyata (Tsonga, South Africa) to try to say something but fail for lack of words

vóvôhetâhtsenáotse (Cheyenne, USA) to prepare the mouth before speaking (for example, by moving or licking one’s lips)

dabodela (Malagasy, Madagascar) one in the habit of opening his mouth so as to show his tongue projecting and rolling a little beyond the teeth, and yet not able to speak

bunhan bunahan (Boro, India) to be about to speak and about not to speak

Chatterbox

With others you sometimes wish they found self-expression harder:

láu táu (Vietnamese) to talk fast and thoughtlessly

hablar hasta por los codos (Spanish) to talk non-stop (literally, to talk even through the elbows)

mae hi’n siarad fel melin bupur (Welsh) she talks non-stop (literally, she talks like a pepper mill)

hinikiza (Swahili) to out-talk a person by making a noise

kumoo musu baa (Mandinka, West Africa) to jump into a conversation without knowing the background

nudnyi (Russian) someone who, when asked how they are, tells you in detail

chovochovo (Luvale, Zambia) the tendency to carry on talking after others have stopped

gnagsår i ørene (Norwegian) blisters in your ears: what someone who talks a lot gives you

On reflection

What’s in a name?

First impressions are important, particularly to the people visiting a place for the first time. The name of the Canary Islands