Christine's Hello

Hello!

The English language has borrowed from many other languages - words that fill a gap. Otherwise we’d still be calling croissants ‘crescent-shaped rolls’. But there are still many gaps that haven’t been filled, which we don’t realise until we look at the rich vocabulary of  other languages.
German has a word vorgestern for the day before yesterday, and ubermorgen, the day after tomorrow. 
Now there’s a fascinating book about this very subject - The Meaning of Tingo and Other Extraordinary Words From Around the World  by Adam Jacot de Boinod. He has examined languages from all over the world, and here are some of his discoveries.
An ataoso is Central American Spanish for one sees problems with everything and a neko-neko is Indonesian for one who has a creative idea which only makes things worse.
There are many more – what about the Japanese tuji-giri, the practice of trying out a new sword on a passerby? And the word tingo in the book title is from the Pascuense language of Easter Island and means to borrow items from a friend’s house one by one, until there’s nothing left.
Let me know what you think we need a word for -  and we’ll see if there is one in another language that we can borrow.

Happy puzzling!