I am watching the Nova special on Tibetan art in Mustang, and I had to share the following sentence with you: "There are many words for 'mud' in Lo Monthang, but none of them are as important as gyang." I don't think I've ever heard the English word "mud" mentioned so many times in an hour. Mustang is truly the Land of Mud. (The language, Lopa, is a Tibetan dialect; Ethnologue says: "The inhabitants of Lo are called 'Lopa'. Their capital is Manthang, called Mustang by outsiders.")
Posted by languagehat at February 18, 2003 08:44 PMI should send you my list of terms meaning 'drunk'. I have about 190 so far...
Posted by: Greg at February 19, 2003 01:34 PMThis isn't another 'great Eskimo vocabularly (snow) hoax' in the making, is it?
Posted by: Tim Dunlop at February 24, 2003 04:33 PMTim: I wondered the same thing, and I await the bold researcher who will do an in-depth study/exposé of the Lopa words for 'mud.'
Posted by: language hat at February 24, 2003 05:08 PM