The following is by Elizabeth Little, a New York Times travel writer
whose first book, Biting the Wax Tadpole: Confessions of a Language Fanatic
(Melville House, $21.95, 9781933633336/1933633336), appears next
Tuesday, November 20:
Of all the words I choose to study when traveling abroad, "book" and "bookstore" usually aren't among them. But not because I don't like to visit bookstores. Wherever you are, bookstores are a perfect refuge when the hustle and bustle of foreign travel gets to be too much--even if you get a kink in your neck from tilting to the left instead of the right to read the spines.
I remember one particularly brutal day during my stint in China, when I had fought passionately--and, ultimately, ineffectually--with officials at a local post office who refused to release a care package that had been sent to me. (Sadly, "but I need my American breakfast cereal!" wasn't the convincing argument I had hoped it would be.) I stormed out of the office, glared at an old man who tried to sell me live crickets and ducked into the first bookshop I could find. I could hardly speak Chinese well enough to order a decent meal, much less read a full book, but that didn't keep me from being calmed by the sight of a beautifully bound edition of Dream of the Red Chamber. Had my backpack been big enough, I would have bought it no matter how impenetrable the language. Instead, I ended up walking out with a slim bilingual learner's edition of Jane Eyre, which rather neatly made me forget about my forbidden Apple Jacks.
"Eyre" in Chinese, by the way, is transcribed with the character 爱 (aì)--"love." At the time, I could think only of how grossly offended my feminist high school English teachers would have been.
Of course, it's entirely possible that I also don't bother to learn the word for "bookstore" because it seems that no matter what language you choose to study, one of the first phrases you learn is "the book is on the table." I figure that I could go just about anywhere, bat my eyelashes and say the phrase with an inquiring expression and probably be pointed to the closest bookshop. Or, alternately, resort to that age-old technique of communication: charades.
But even though many practical and mime-ready travelers might not need to know the words for "book" or "bookstore," any language-loving bibliophile is likely to be charmed by the variety of words used for "book" throughout the world. The English word "book" is echoed in a number of other languages (such as the Dutch boek, the Icelandic bók, or even the Indonesian buku), words that all trace back to a long-ago Germanic word for "beech," the wood that was commonly used back when rune-carving was all the rage. Many Romance languages use words that originate from the Latin liber, which originally described the inner bark of trees. Please note, however, that no matter how politically tempting it might be to say otherwise, the Latin words for "book" and "freedom" are only coincidental homographs.
Not all languages base their words for book on types of tress, though. In many Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic, the word for "book" is related to the act of writing. And biblion, the Greek word for book that has been handily co-opted by the bestselling book of all time, is most likely derived from Byblos, the Greek name for the Phoenician port that handled most of the trade in Egyptian papyrus.
My favorite book-related bit of lexical trivia, though, doesn't relate to history or etymology. Instead it relates to rather unpleasant creatures. I've never been particularly skittish about worms, mostly, I think, because I grew up with such friendly bookish thoughts about the slimy things. Rodents are another story. So imagine my surprise, when I discovered that in Spanish, French and Italian, the equivalent of "bookworm" is, literally translated, "library rat."
It may not be the most lyrical phrase, but when I think about the way I scuttled off to that Chinese bookstore, nose crinkling at the smell of fresh paper, I can't help but admit that it's frighteningly apt.
Of all the words I choose to study when traveling abroad, "book" and "bookstore" usually aren't among them. But not because I don't like to visit bookstores. Wherever you are, bookstores are a perfect refuge when the hustle and bustle of foreign travel gets to be too much--even if you get a kink in your neck from tilting to the left instead of the right to read the spines.
I remember one particularly brutal day during my stint in China, when I had fought passionately--and, ultimately, ineffectually--with officials at a local post office who refused to release a care package that had been sent to me. (Sadly, "but I need my American breakfast cereal!" wasn't the convincing argument I had hoped it would be.) I stormed out of the office, glared at an old man who tried to sell me live crickets and ducked into the first bookshop I could find. I could hardly speak Chinese well enough to order a decent meal, much less read a full book, but that didn't keep me from being calmed by the sight of a beautifully bound edition of Dream of the Red Chamber. Had my backpack been big enough, I would have bought it no matter how impenetrable the language. Instead, I ended up walking out with a slim bilingual learner's edition of Jane Eyre, which rather neatly made me forget about my forbidden Apple Jacks.
"Eyre" in Chinese, by the way, is transcribed with the character 爱 (aì)--"love." At the time, I could think only of how grossly offended my feminist high school English teachers would have been.
Of course, it's entirely possible that I also don't bother to learn the word for "bookstore" because it seems that no matter what language you choose to study, one of the first phrases you learn is "the book is on the table." I figure that I could go just about anywhere, bat my eyelashes and say the phrase with an inquiring expression and probably be pointed to the closest bookshop. Or, alternately, resort to that age-old technique of communication: charades.
But even though many practical and mime-ready travelers might not need to know the words for "book" or "bookstore," any language-loving bibliophile is likely to be charmed by the variety of words used for "book" throughout the world. The English word "book" is echoed in a number of other languages (such as the Dutch boek, the Icelandic bók, or even the Indonesian buku), words that all trace back to a long-ago Germanic word for "beech," the wood that was commonly used back when rune-carving was all the rage. Many Romance languages use words that originate from the Latin liber, which originally described the inner bark of trees. Please note, however, that no matter how politically tempting it might be to say otherwise, the Latin words for "book" and "freedom" are only coincidental homographs.
Not all languages base their words for book on types of tress, though. In many Semitic languages like Hebrew and Arabic, the word for "book" is related to the act of writing. And biblion, the Greek word for book that has been handily co-opted by the bestselling book of all time, is most likely derived from Byblos, the Greek name for the Phoenician port that handled most of the trade in Egyptian papyrus.
My favorite book-related bit of lexical trivia, though, doesn't relate to history or etymology. Instead it relates to rather unpleasant creatures. I've never been particularly skittish about worms, mostly, I think, because I grew up with such friendly bookish thoughts about the slimy things. Rodents are another story. So imagine my surprise, when I discovered that in Spanish, French and Italian, the equivalent of "bookworm" is, literally translated, "library rat."
It may not be the most lyrical phrase, but when I think about the way I scuttled off to that Chinese bookstore, nose crinkling at the smell of fresh paper, I can't help but admit that it's frighteningly apt.