hair in my soup

“ Follow me to Pormpuraaw, a small Aboriginal community on the western edge of Cape York, in northern Australia. I came here because of the way the locals, the Kuuk Thaayorre, talk about space. Instead of words like "right," "left," "forward," and "back," which, as commonly used in English, define space relative to an observer, the Kuuk Thaayorre, like many other Aboriginal groups, use cardinal-direction terms — north, south, east, and west — to define space. This is done at all scales, which means you have to say things like "There's an ant on your southeast leg" or "Move the cup to the north northwest a little bit." One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is "Where are you going?" and the answer should be something like " Southsoutheast, in the middle distance." If you don't know which way you're facing, you can't even get past "Hello." ”

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“ In Choctaw, an interesting thing has happened. There are two native words, fakit and cholokloha, both based on the sound of the bird's call. The word `fakit' is pronounced just like `fuck it' so it has fallen precipitously from use as the Choctaw community has become bilingual. Fakit has been replaced by `akank chaaha' or `tall chicken'. I am not sure if `akanka' referred to native birds before the advent of European domestic chickens, but that word is used for this bird now. So we have a native word replaced by a phrasal descriptive term based on a European bird to avoid embarrassing ourselves to English speakers. Sigh. ”

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“ From Dutch pappekak, from pap (“mush”) + kak (“shit”). ”

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Like the 2007 Word of the Year, "Te Qaeda", "rofflenui" is a portmanteau word -- in this case, a combination of Maori and geek.

"It derives from 'ROFL' -- a venerable internet acronym for 'roll on floor laughing'," says Public Address founder Russell Brown. "So you add the 'nui' and you're literally laughing big-time.

"Strictly speaking, it should be 'roflnui', but the discussion came down firmly on the side of the great phonetic clarity of "rofflenui"."

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