Bambusbjörn and Läderlapp – words as souvenirs
In Iceland, she is a bamboo björn: the panda bear Meng Meng in the Berlin Zoo
Source: pa/dpa/dpa-ZB/Britta Pedersen
AWonderful word creations can be discovered on travels, which you can immediately take home with you as a language souvenir. Scandinavia is particularly productive. For example, our favorite Icelandic word is Bamboo bear. This is how the Icelanders describe a giant panda bear. Since then, when visiting the zoo in Berlin, the portly cuddly giant who sits on his buttocks chewing on bamboo leaves all day long has been called that by us. Bamboo Björn, as usual.
Or caught on the way in Sweden: That’s where the bat is Leather patch, logically the comic figure Batman was called Läderlappen there for a long time. You can almost hear the jagged black wings flapping. Foreign language words that inspire vacationers.
A visit to Helsinki, Finland also proves to be extremely fruitful when it comes to word exports. In Finland there is the old unit of measure Poronkusema, she comes from reindeer herding in Lapland. It measures the distance a reindeer harnessed to a sleigh can trot before it has to stop to pee. This corresponds to about 7.5 kilometers, about twice the distance from the Hernesaari cruise terminal to the port market in Helsinki – which would be half a Poronkusema.
In Japan, the language is romantic
Some word inventions in Japan are less hearty, but all the more poetic. There is no suitable translation into other languages for these either, only paraphrases. For example, a particularly euphonious Japanese word describes the way the sun’s rays sparkle through the leaves of a tree: Komorebi.
And when millions of cherry trees there wither in April, their pink and white petals swirling down like snowflakes – then Sakurafubuki, so cherry blossom blizzard. It’s wonderful how romantic the Japanese are when it comes to language.
A Japanese woman produces a small cherry blossom blizzard called Sakurafubuki
Quelle: Getty Images/Oscar Wong
There are almost 6500 languages worldwide. Each of them has its own charming characteristics. The Italian language teacher Michela Tartaglia, who lives in the USA, collects the most beautiful words and phrases from various languages.
In her beautifully illustrated volume “Other countries, other sayings” (DuMont Verlag), she has compiled the 24 most well-known proverbs from several languages, “knowing well that translations never quite correspond to the original – Umberto Eco compares them to prostheses in artificial teeth”, as she writes. “It’s the differences and similarities between the languages in particular that reveal our distance, but also our closeness to strangers.”
One of her favorite proverbs from Italy is: Country you go, custom you find (literally translated: In every country you go to, you will find its own customs). There is something to it: while in German, for example, we are careful not to wake sleeping dogs, the French are wary of sleeping cats.
Let’s say someone’s head is silly, it’s bats in the bell tower for the British, a spider on the ceiling for the French and crickets for the Italians. Italy vacationers also like to import a sympathetic invention of words that nobody in this country knows: noon – rest in the shade at midday.
