{"id":1935,"date":"2009-08-13T11:39:05","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T18:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=1935"},"modified":"2009-08-13T11:44:28","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T18:44:28","slug":"book-review-im-not-hanging-noodles-on-your-ears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/13\/book-review-im-not-hanging-noodles-on-your-ears\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a funny little saying I learned early on in my time in Austria: “It’s sausage to me.” It means, essentially, “Whatever, I don’t care.” It’s not in Jag Bhalla’s wacky collection of regionalisms, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World<\/a> , but lots of other\"\" linguistic oddities are.<\/p>\n

As something of a self-professed language nerd, it’s been endlessly amusing to crack open this little book to, oh, the romance section to learn that in France you can call your darling a hen’s egg or that in Japan, having a thick belly means you are brave. It’s a desk reference of peculiar descriptions — my best pal has already adopted the phrase “When snakes wore vests” to signify a long time ago.<\/p>\n

The book doesn’t unpack the whys of these phrases, nor does it offer the native language versions of such gems as “having eaten a monkey” (German for losing your heart). In the introduction, Bhalla preempts most objections about what else might be left out of the book — you don’t expect deeper language analysis; it’s more entertainment, a game.<\/p>\n

Because of my love for language and because I have the annoying ability to be a smartass in more than one language, I felt like the book was a bit of tease, setting me up with tasty little bites of language appetizers without bringing on the full meal for my brain. That’s not to say I didn’t like it, I am still enjoying having it around the house, still watching my friends who drop in open to such inscrutable phrases as “a cow on skates” — a French description of a cop — burst in to giggles.\u00c2\u00a0 A cow on skates. Heh.<\/p>\n

What I wanted from the book was more, more depth, more phrases, more translations, more context. I’m waiting for the second edition, the one that answers my questions, that gives me the tools to say increasingly bizarre things when called to speak German.<\/p>\n

Jag Bhalla talks about his book on NPR, here<\/a>. Oh, and as always, a disclaimer:\u00c2\u00a0 My copy came from the publisher. You can get your own from Amazon, here<\/a>. Plus, one minor addtional clarification. I’d hardly call myself bilingual, but I do speak enough German to be hugely annoying in a word bending kind of way when I want to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a funny little saying I learned early on in my time in Austria: “It’s sausage to me.” It means, essentially, “Whatever, I don’t care.” It’s not in Jag Bhalla’s wacky collection of regionalisms, I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World , but lots of other linguistic … <\/p>\n


…read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[569,572,571,570,144],"class_list":["post-1935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel-reads","tag-jag-bhalla","tag-language","tag-reading","tag-semantics","tag-travel-books","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1935"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1937,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1935\/revisions\/1937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}