A dose of the verbals

A light moment in the preliminary stages of learning Turkish is to discover that the word in that tongue for ‘talking nonsense’ is fart. Later on one finds that the Turkish for ‘violin bow’ is arse, though these facts alone are not always enough to carry the student chortling on to complete mastery of the language. The Danish for bookshop is boghandel and the Swedish for ice-cream is glass. Adam Jacot de Boinod’s The Meaning of Tingo (Penguin, £10) is not entirely filled with such false friends, but he does like them.

I began to be suspicious when he claimed that slug means ‘servant’ in Gaulish. Gaulish? No one speaks Gaulish. A Celtic language, it is known from a few inscriptions, and slug is indeed the root of the word for ‘servant’. But I suppose looking too seriously into these things spoils the fun. We must suspend disbelief and accept for a laugh that bum is the Arabic for ‘owl’ and the Turkish for ‘bang’ too.