There's a tradition in the Amish community called "Rumspringa" whereby adolescents flirt around with ideas of modernity. It is a sort of a limbo, a time of their lives where their tethers to the traditional lifestyle, their faith, are loosened up. And it is then when these soon-to-be adults decide if they want to stick to the traditional Amish lifestyle or they want to get out of the shells of their conservatism. John Koenig, one of the more ingenious neologists of out time, took this tradition, patched it up with a German word "Stadtzentrum" meaning “city center”, and came up with a sandwich term "trumspringa", whose meaning he expresses in his poetical way:
" trumspringa (n): the longing to wander off your career track in pursuit of a simple life- tending a small farm in a forest clearing, keeping a lighthouse on a secluded atoll, or becoming a shepherd in the mountains-which is just the kind of hypnotic diversion that allows your thoughts to make a break for it and wander back to their cubicles in the city."
I too, am haunted by the nostalgia for a "trumpsringa".
It was Koenig who instilled in me the wonder of words, their origins, and how these nuggets of alphabets can be used in ways to express a whole repertoire of feelings that are lodged inside me, inside us. Not to say that James Joyce's Ulysses with the use of the word "poppysmic"in the sentence:
“Florry whispers to her. Whispering lovewords murmur, liplapping loudly, poppysmic plopslop.”
wasn't a brilliant invention enough ( describing the sound of the smacking of the lips) to care for the beauty of words. But I hadn't read Ulysses with such depth before I had stumbled onto Koenig. After I did, I was left with a lot of respect for Joyce to have coined "smilesmirk"- a perfect semblance between a "smile" and a "smirk"; "smellsip" - an act of smelling and sipping at the same time; "mekgnao"- the "meow" of a cat rippled with other consonant-ness; "wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair"- to describe the tumult of a bulk of a hair; and the list might just run on. And on.
If Basho had a sniff of these delectables, his most famous haiku
Old pond...
a frog jumps in
water's sound.
might have been rendred
Old pond...
a frog jumps in
poppysmic plopslop
to describe the "sound of water", which is sometimes translated as "Plop". I don't know if it would be been a better English rendition but it would certainly have been a tad cheeky.
It was partly this obsession with strange/ foreign sounding words that I stumbled into the brilliant director of Ethnobureaucratica, Iván G. SOMLAI / ईभान शोम्लई, who told me that one of the perks of learning new languages was that it"expands the ability to understand (non-linguistic) differences by acceptance of varied reasoning. It can also increase cultural awareness; creativity; patience; and sensitivity." I don't know if I have cultivated such qualities just yet but here's a bit on German words.
Follow us on Social Media :
Facebook : / wisedumbnepaliforu
TikTok : / wisedumb2019
Instagram : / wisedumb_nepali
Contact Us : knoway.studios@gmail.com
About Us :
The two men who are at the forefront of WiseDumb podcasts are Karan Bhatta and Rupesh Sah who are researchers, educators and media personalities. You can reach out to them for a collaboration:
/ karan-bhatta-061484263
/ rupesh-kumar-sah-10227...