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| This lovely book is available on Amazon |
I was drawn to this book on my shelf this morning. I pulled it down and tried to recall where or from whom I got it. There is no note inside the cover indicating it was a gift, but I have to admit I don't remember for sure. It's just the kind of book I would purchase on my own impulsively; I am a logophile. I think I may recall standing in an actual book store looking at it, so it's possible I bought it myself. Then again, this may be a false memory.
Anyway, I sat with my Cold Brew coffee this morning and read the entire book. It's a delightful collection of 29 "untranslatable" words from around the world. Many of them represent recognizable feelings and concepts, but do not have direct translations in other languages. I giggled at the two English words included in the book, gobbledygook and whimsy. I think these are interesting choices, given English is the language with the greatest number of words (about 250, 000 according to the book). Gobbledygook has American origin (Texas, 1944) and though it wasn't directly stated as so, it seems whimsy comes from England.
For this month's prompt, we will use words from around the world to inspire our writing; genre of your choice as always. I have selected five, and included them as photos because they are presented so beautifully in the book. Enjoy!
The illustration on this one was so beautiful, I had to include it.
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