I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World Read Free Page A

posits a theory, he concedes that “no etymologist has yet come up with the specific item made of wool.” And I can be no match. As any good laissez-fairer would, I pre-capitulate.
    However, if it turns out that enough people are interested, perhaps a wonderfully wikied * (and laissez-fairy) way of dealing with the enormity of this challenge might be the establishment of a new sport: WWWF (Worldwide Word Watching Federation) Competitive Etymology, in which volunteer vocabularians with sufficient stamina can engage in a WWWF Track-Down.
    PREFACE, PREAMBLE, & PRELIMINARIES
    Here are five reasons to be curious ** about languages:
    • First, languages provide a wonderful window into other peoples and how they see the world. You’ve probably heard the not-so- urban legend about the Inuit having many words for snow. The validity of that claim is disputed by linguists, who say many of those snowy words are just modifications of a small number of root words. 9 You might, however, raise an eyebrow at the less well-known fact that Albanians, also presumably confronted with environmental excesses, have an excess of words for facial hair. These include “long broom-like moustache with bushy ends” and eyebrows that are “arched like the crescent moon.” While we are on the subject: Italians have an expression for a “woman with a moustache who is attractive” and Arabs have a contrariwise proverb that pleads “may God protect us from hairy women and beardless men.” The Danish recognize the limitations of facial hair in their proverb “if a beard were all, the goat would be the winner.” Whilst I’m in no position to adjudicate the worthiness of urban language legends, it does make intuitive sense that languages are exquisitely attuned to the environments and predilections of their speakers. For example, the Marovo speakers of the Solomon Islands have a single word to describe “the behavior of groups of fish when individuals drift, circle, and float as if drunk.” There’s nothing fishy (or, as a similarly suspicious German might say, nothing “totally pure rabbit” or the Chinese “under a plum tree”) about these people’s being keenly interested in which side their bread is buttered on .
     
    • Second, language provides a wonderful window into other people, i.e., other specific individuals. A sentiment wonderfully and briefly encapsulated in a quotation from Ben Jonson, one of Shakespeare’s rivals: “Language most shows a man. Speak that I might see thee.”
     
    • Third, language provides a wonderful window that also works the other way. Looking in that direction provides entrée into another exotic and intriguing world, the insides of our own heads. For example, analyzing the associations implicit in our understanding of words can show how quickly we judge people by their appearances. Careful measurements, down to the millisecond level, show that we are hard-wired to notice race and gender. The average person registers the race of another human face in less than a hundred milliseconds, and gender in another 50 milliseconds. 10 There will be more details on this, and much else in language that can be used to shed light on our insides, in the following chapters.
     
    • Fourth, we should all pay close attention to language because it can have such powerful conscious effects. Benjamin Disraeli, twice the British Prime Minister in the 19th century, is famous for having said, “with words we govern men.” I’m not so well read that I knew that. I’m indebted to William Safire, the American English–speaking world’s most prominent self-confessed word maven. He uses it as inspiration for his own extension “by proverbs we enliven copy.” 11 Which I can stretch further to say “by idioms we enliven speech.” The original quotation describes the conscious use of language as an instrument of power in the public arena. Something Americans in particular understand and respect. Their constitution is