Alexander McCall Smith Quote
The Germans had a word for everything – a word that could be very focused, very specific, because it could be constructed for a precise set of circumstances. They even had a word, it was said, for the feeling of envy experienced when one sees the tasty dishes ordered by others in a restaurant and it is too late to change one’s own order. Mahlneid, meal envy, she believed that was the word – if it existed at all. People invented German composite nouns as a sort of parlour game, and most of them would never catch on – though some must, sometimes. For every word there was a first user, an ur-speaker; that was how language developed: somebody considered a particular word right for a particular moment, and began to use it. Mahlneid could well catch on because many are bound to have felt that sort of envy as the waiter carries the dishes of others, gorgeously tantalising, past their own table; many might be expected to welcome that particular word.
The Germans had a word for everything – a word that could be very focused, very specific, because it could be constructed for a precise set of circumstances. They even had a word, it was said, for the feeling of envy experienced when one sees the tasty dishes ordered by others in a restaurant and it is too late to change one’s own order. Mahlneid, meal envy, she believed that was the word – if it existed at all. People invented German composite nouns as a sort of parlour game, and most of them would never catch on – though some must, sometimes. For every word there was a first user, an ur-speaker; that was how language developed: somebody considered a particular word right for a particular moment, and began to use it. Mahlneid could well catch on because many are bound to have felt that sort of envy as the waiter carries the dishes of others, gorgeously tantalising, past their own table; many might be expected to welcome that particular word.
Related Quotes
About Alexander McCall Smith
