Говори и пиши как The Eсonomist

The rules we learn from Cicero are these: speak clearly; speak easily but not too much, especially when others want their turn; do not interrupt; be courteous; deal seriously with serious mat­ters and gracefully with lighter ones; never criticise people be­hind their backs; stick to subjects of general interest; do not talk about yourself; and, above all, never lose your temper.

Old jokes are often the best jokes, and many of the most amusing ex­amples are of terrible errors that can be made in different languages: there is fart (Turkish for talking nonsense), buzz (Arabic for nipple), sofa (Icelandic for sleep), shagit (Albanian for crawling on your belly), jam (Mongolian for road), nob (Wolof for love), dad (Albanian for babysitter), loo (Fulani for a storage pot), babe (SisSwati for a government minis­ter), slug (Gaulish for servant), flab (Gaelic for a mushroom) and moron (Welsh for carrot).

Scores of native speakers of around 50 languages, including Ara­bic, Dari, Persian, Urdu, Pushtu and Bengali, have been hired — some say the NYPD has more Arabic speakers than the FBI. It has, at times, irritated both the CIA and the FBI, who are jealous guard­ians of their turf.

Three Egypt's Coptic Christian bishops will be elected 40 days after She- nouda's death and then a blindfolded child will select the new patriarch from among the three, as ancient tradition dictates.

But being right and being seen to be right are different things.

English has a tendency to absorb foreign words and then neutralise them — ad hoc, feng shui, croissant and kindergarten are all good ex­amples — which may be why English-speakers often fail to realise quite how wonderfully subtle and evocative other tongues can be.

It is not so much the languages that have two dozen words for snow, say, or horse or walrus carcass that impress the most, but those that draw differences between the seemingly indistinguish­able. Italian, as one would imagine, is particularly good on male vanity, and French on love as a business. The richness of Yiddish for insults seems to be matched only by the many and varied Japanese words for the deep joy that can come as a response to beauty and the German varieties of sadness and disappointment.

Adam Jacot de Boinod, a BBC researcher, has sifted through more than 280 dictionaries and 140 websites to discover that Albanians have 27 words for moustache — including mustaqe madh for bushy and mustaqe posht for one which droops down at both ends — that gin is Phrygian for drying out, that the Dutch say plimpplamppletteren when they are skimming stones and that instead of snap, crackle, pop, Rice Krispies in the Netherlands go Knisper!

Now for the first time he had become conscious of the terrible mystery of Destiny, of the awful meaning of Doom.

Translation into Spanglish of the first few pages of Cervantes's "Don Quixote". It begins: "In un placete de la Mancha of which nombre no qui- ero remembrearme, vivia, not so long ago, uno de esos gentlemen who always tienen una lanza in the rack, una buckler antigua, a skinny ca- ballo y un grayhound para el chase."

Thirteen languages in Germany are on UNESCO's endangered list.

Mr Ellemann-Jensen explained the idea by reference to Hamlet: "To be or not to be, that is the question. To be and not to be, that is the answer."

Hercules, demigod and paragon of masculinity in the ancient world, was indirectly done for by his own sexual prowess — his jealous wife, Deianira.

I scoff at Tuyuca and Kwaio for having only two words for "we", inclu­sive and exclusive. In English we have three: the regular we meaning you and I, as in "we had dinner together"; the royal we meaning I, as in "we are not amused"; and the marital we meaning you, as in "we need to take out the garbage."

Travel was not just about seeing, but about being seen.

Muslims are obliged to go on the haj at least once in their lifetime. So many pilgrims want to make the journey that the Saudis now impose strict national quotas (calculated according to national populations) on pilgrims. Once arrived, they begin their rituals: the changing into simple white clothes, the tawaf or circumambulation of the ka'ba, the drinking at the sacred Zamzam well, the prescribed running and collecting of peb­bles, the shaving or cutting of one's hair and the renewed commitment to the principles of Islam.

The Christians all say that reciting the first verse of the 23rd psalm helps them enter a religious state.

Right back at you across the pond: Sprain, Bad Reportugal, Inkland, Dire- land, Not-so-Niceland, Greece Trap, Francid, Itally, Wild Turkey, Check Republic, Repoland, Slowvakia. You started this.