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Jump to navigationJump to searchToujours Tingo by Adam Jacot de Boinod (view source)
Revision as of 15:04, 11 May 2018
, 15:04, 11 May 2018no edit summary
This is the type of book that makes me wish for a photographic memory, but I can only guess that it would make me insufferable. Just think of me being able to remember that memestatamao'o is the word in the Cheyenne language for laughing so hard it causes you to make a rude noise in the down-belows. Or that the Inuit tongue has a word for making sure you marry someone by kidnapping her (nusukaaktuat).
For those who were unfortunate to not come across the first book of [[The Meaning of Tingo|Tingo]], this is just as much of a delight. Tingo the word means taking a neighbour's possessions under cover of night one by one until there are none left. Tingo the book puts paid to the old saw that English is the most elaborate language, with a word for everything. If someone's said that to you before, and all you have been able to come up with is some unproven count of the Inuit words for different kinds of snow, then you need a copy of this and its predecessor. And an eidetic memory.
''Tingo'' is certainly not the book to read from cover to cover. Instead one should dip in for short spells - longer perhaps than the time it takes one to click their fingers ten times or indeed the time needed to eat a banana, but not for too long.
