Friday, April 1, 2022

6000 Ways to Say "Penis"

As an undergrad Modern Languages major, I studied Spanish, French, German, and Greek.  In grad school in Comparative Literature, I studied Italian, Russian, and Turkish.  Since then, I've studied several other languages.  Of course, I didn't get far in most, and they fade away over time; today, about all I can get by in are the original Spanish, French, and German.

But I'm still interested in languages, particularly isolates, the remnants of ancient language families that have somehow managed to avoid the encroachment of economically-superior English, Spanish, Urdu, Chinese, or Arabic.

Actually, I don't really want to learn these languages; I just want to meet men who speak a language unlike any other in the world, and maybe learn a few new words for penis or My hotel is nearby.

1. Burushaski: 87,000 speakers in mountains of far northern Pakistan, near the borders of China and Tajikstan.

Their valley, Hunza, was the source of the Shangri-La legend.  Travelers said that they had no wars or disputes, and eternal youth.  So this Burushaski gym rat could be over 100.  He's had a shipen since he was about 20; before that, it was a sushun.

Tash chom means pull, sex appeal, and to find someone to spend the night with.



2. Tarascan (Purepecha), the remnants of an empire that threatened the Aztecs in precolonial Mexico, now has 240,000 speakers in Michioacan.

Kuini in Purepecha means penis, bird, and prison term.  I'm wondering about the prison term.








3. Mapuche: 250,000 speakers in southern Ecuador.  Their leader Capulican is memoralized in a Beefcake statue.

The slogan of the Mapuche civil rights movement is Newen penis, "Power to Mapuche Brothers."

The Mapuche word for penis is punun, which, by the way, is the same as the Quechua word for bed. 






They specialize in a novelty carving called an Indio Picaro, a smiling Mapuche Indian who, when you raise him up, displays an erect penis.








4. Basque, with 720,000 speakers in the Pyrenees of northern Spain. Yuri and I visited Basque country in 1999 in search of the world's largest penis.

Which, in Basque, is zakil.














5. But the biggest of the language isolates is Korean, with 78 million speakers.

The average Korean penis length is 3.8", the smallest in the world (the U.S.is 5.0").

There's a blog that attempts to answer this unjust accusation, offering proof that the Korean eumgyeong is just as big as anybody else's.

See also: 18 Yiddish Words for Penis; In Search of the Lapp Penis.






2 comments:

  1. In Lakota, che. Which makes me always laugh at trendskyists who wear mass-produced shirts featuring the image of a certain leader of the Cuban Revolution. Shirts made in Third World countries for pennies a day, with 12-hour shifts and no safety features or lunch breaks and...You know? I'd probably be laughing at them even if I weren't Lakota.

    Chegnake means loincloth. Chegnag means to use a hand (or two) to cover your penis.

    Also on this topic, sluka means erection or otherwise to have the glans exposed. (Missionaries, though, chose waxlaya, the x being like the Spanish j in the dialect I speak, to represent circumcision when translating the Bible. In reality, waxlaya is a cooking direction, to peel or fillet. Makes me wonder how many of those missionaries, um, you know where I'm going with this, right?) During an inipi or at least one ear dance, men would bind their foreskins like the ancient Greeks did at the Olympics (albeit only bonding it, not tying it to a belt or the base of the penis), but I'm unaware of the name of the device.

    That's about all I have for penis in Lakota, though susu means testicles. Itka also means testicles, or eggs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. WAR dance. Ducking autocorrect! I feel like declaring war on Silicon Valley just for that annoying feature.

      Delete

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