A delightful little (7 x 5 inch) library book titled “I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears,” came my way via our public library bookmobile recently.  It’s by Jag Bhalla and is subtitled “and Other Intriguing Idioms from Around the World,” and I’m not hanging noodles on your ears (A Russian idiom meaning “I’m not fooling”) when I say my delight extended to buy my own copy.  When encountering similar books usually a quick glance through suffices, but besides a lot of many strange idioms, Bhalla’s includes extended essays into a variety of related subjects.  He also he cites his sources and has a complete bibliography, which always warms librarians’ cockles, however he failed to include an index.  He defined idiom as “a group of words that are used as a single unit, the meaning of which is not clear from the meanings of the constituent words.”  In brief, “the words just don’t add up.”  He noted that to “a linguist, idioms and words are both lexemes.  They are self-contained units for conveying meanings.”  

            He also called idioms “non-literal language.”  One way to think of some idioms is that they are fossilized metaphors.  Their meanings were probably quite clear when they were coined and gained wide currency, but their use continued, even after the direct connection was lost.  For example, ‘letting the cat out of the bag’ originally referred to a way of avoiding the common fraud in 16^th-century markets of selling a cheap substitute – a cat hidden inside a bag instead of a pricier piglet.”  The book also contains a whole passel of idioms the casual reader is sure to get a kick out of.  In Cuba a stingy person “walks on their elbows,” while in Arabic they’re known as an “ant milker.”  In Italy rekindled love affairs are called “reheated cabbage,” luxurious living in Germany is termed “living like a maggot in bacon.”  Bhalla separated the idioms into loose categories that begin with essays.  For instance, “Emotional States” opens with discussing how our emotions are often written all over our faces and quotes from Charles Darwin’s lesser known book, “The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animal.”  He suggested that reading facial expressions “can wonderfully be thought of as a form of mind-reading” and goes on to describe the Facial Action Coding System developed at UC San Francisco.  The system “breaks all possible facial expressions into 40 or so action units, each of which corresponds to the tightening or relaxation of particular muscles.”  His favorite of these is the nostril dilator “which Japanese pay attention to in their idiom ‘to move the wings of one’s nose incessantly,’ meaning to brag or have a swelled head.”

Bhalla also stood like a watered poodle, like a crestfallen German, and lowered his ears like sad Spaniards, over his inability to learn a second language.  He noted that three quarters of humanity are at least bi-lingual, and their brains are better exercised than us monolinguals.  “On average, lifelong bilinguals get Alzheimer’s four years later. Neuroscientists think that being bilingual builds ‘mind muscle’ (or to use the technical lingo, ‘cognitive reserve’.” Bhalla then goes into polyglots (speakers of two or more languages).  I take heart that lifelong readers can build up ten years of cognitive reserve, but, like Bhalla, despite my desire I lack the aptitude and discipline to master another tongue, or I have a hair on my hand. as the French describe laziness.   In contrast, according to “German Call for English to Be Second Official Language Amid Labor Shortage,” a The Guardian article by Philip Oltermann, “English should become a second official language at administrative offices in Germany, one of the country’s governing parties has argued, saying unwieldy bureaucratic German is proving too much of a deterrent for much-needed skilled workers from abroad,” and “the offices where they have to register once these workers are here should be able to offer them English application forms and caseworkers who are fluent in English.” 

Cleopatra, who spoke Greek, Latin, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Trogodyte, and the Hebraioi’s, Arabes’, Syrians’, Medes’, and Parthians’ languages, was certainly polyglottal, and while becoming even a bilingual polyglot seems beyond me, I can at least aspire, albeit rather weakly, to being a micropolymath.  “Polyglot vs. Polymath,” an article from Diffen.com (a website specializing in differences) points out that a polyglot can speak, read, or write in several languages and “may not necessarily be able to parse the language or know the rules of its syntax” but they can “communicate fluently, and can use the most complex sentence structures and expressions with ease.”  A polymath has “extraordinarily broad and comprehensive knowledge.  Also known as polyhistor, renaissance man.”  Them’s fighting words, according to “The Renaissance Man (Woman) Versus the Polymath,” an article from Thepolymaths.com, who argues that “the OED defines a Renaissance man as ‘one who exhibits the virtues of an idealized man of the Renaissance’” while “a modern polymath [is] one who is proficient in or who has made significant accomplishments in at least two widely disparate fields or three less disparate fields … Polymath status is based solely on knowledge and intellectual achievements, whereas Renaissance man status is based primarily on factors other than one’s intellectual abilities and achievements.”  The ideal Renaissance man was well-educated, “a perfect gentleman, a man who was not only accomplished in most fields of study, but also was athletic, skilled in military science, courteous, well spoken, artistic, and musical.  And, as if that wasn’t enough, the ideal man was supposed to be able to do all that with grace and nonchalance.”  In short, “a Renaissance man might be a polymath, but a polymath is not necessarily a Renaissance man.”

“Do You Have a ‘Polymathic Personality?”  A Forbes article by Mark Travers listed the characteristics of polymaths: they enjoy structured activities, tend to pursue multiple interests, and “strive to use their abilities to create positive change.”  They also cultivate positive psychological capital,” which “consists of four components”: self-efficacy (“the belief in one’s ability to accomplish their goals”), hope (“set ambitious learning goals and the willpower to find paths to achieve them”), optimism (“an open-minded approach to learning and experimentation”), and resilience.  They also “create the right environment by having “access to opportunities for exploring different fields, exposure to diverse learning experiences, educational resources and structured activities that stimulate intellectual curiosity and skill attainment.”  The barriers to learning the ropes must be reduced to fuel lifelong learning.  Folks, that “right environment” describes pretty well why public libraries exist.  Travers cited a paper by Michael Araki that “suggests that individuals can also display “micro-polymathy,” in which a person can “excel and integrate various facets of knowledge within a specialized context or a specific field, such as an artist who can sing, dance and act.”

Evidence to that effect is in Babbel.com’s article “The Most Multilingual People Throughout History” by Nuno Marques.  He began by noting that a Liberian polyglot named Ziad Fazah claimed a Guinness World Record of 58 languages but in 1998 that award was rescinded since “his mastery over some of these languages has since fallen into question.”  His Wikipedia article refers to him as “an alleged polyglot” and Guinness “has since removed his name from any language-linked records.”  That can’t be said about a real, and most unusual, polyglot: J.R.R. Tolkien, whose mother taught him Latin, French and German and launched his appetite for languages.  “His favorite was allegedly Finnish, a passion triggered by discovering a book of Finnish grammar, an event he described as ‘entering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavor never tasted before.’  Finnish inspired him to create Quenya, a High Elvish language. His love of Welsh influenced Sindarin, the second of his most complex and complete invented tongues … His first forays into glossopoeia (the creation of languages) began in his teens, with Animalic and Nevbosh.”  Tolkien “went on to create Noldorin, Naffarin, Common Eldarin, … Goldogrin, Noldorin, Telerin, Ilkorin, Avarin, Rohirric, Adunaic and Doriathrin. His grasp of naturally evolved languages included the aforementioned Welsh and Finnish, Latin, French and German, but also Greek, Middle English, Old English, Gothic, Italian, Old Norse and Spanish.”  He was the ultimate micro-polymath who “remained a creature of habit and simple pleasures, rarely traveling outside of his mind and rarely using the languages he learned (and created!) to communicate with others in a real setting. He saw languages as valuable in themselves, serving no purpose other than to give pleasure to the speaker.”

In Japan Tolkien’s wonderful books caused them to loosen their cheeks (smile), and in Russia they were as happy as a fiancé, and readers’ eyebrows danced in China.  But delighted readers in France were “farting in silk.”