According to a site I was directed to on the internet, that global bric-a-brac shop of truth and fiction, there is a Swedish word (mångata) that means "moon road" and is used to describe the moon's reflection on a body of water. According to this same site, in the Turkish language there is a word (yakamoz) that means pretty much the same thing. I do hope these words are real, because I desperately want them to be - and, what is more, I wonder why we can't have cool words like these in our New Zealand version of English.
Yes, there are a lot of words already in the English language - over a million apparently - but what is so wrong with adding more if they are the right words to give voice to something conceptually cool? The Italian word "abbiocco" means something along the lines of "the sleepy feeling you get after a big meal". Meanwhile, over in Spain they have "sobremesa" which is the word for when you stay at the table after the food is over in order to have the lively conversation that can follow a good meal (and wine). These are wonderful words, encapsulating wonderful concepts, so where are our poetic nouns for the same things?
There is a Norwegian word (utepils) that means "a beer you can drink outside". Totally understandable that, given all those months in Norway where you can't do anything outside because you will freeze, that they would have a word that celebrates having a beer in the sunshine. Why don't we have more beer-related words in our beer-related culture? What about a word that specifically means "the first beer on a hot day, right after mowing the lawns"? This, in my opinion, is the moment when beer tastes its very best, and we should celebrate and define that in our language.
In fact summertime in New Zealand should be overflowing with words that celebrate us and the things we do at our favourite time of year. Where is the word that definitively captures "the burning sensation on the soles of your feet on sand that causes you to run the last few metres into the surf"? And with that word there should be a sister word that means "the pause as you stand in the water contemplating the run across the burning sand to where you left your towel".
Fish and chips on the beach, a traditional Kiwi summer rite of passage, would be all the richer for words covering the following: "the sound of the sharp intake of breath when you bite into a hot piece of fish"; "not really caring about the sand that has got on to the chips along with the salt because they're bloody good chips"; "the act of throwing chips at the seagulls" and "the idiot who forgot to get the tomato sauce".
