London, Jan 09: Right on cue, in time for many a Western Christmas stocking, the ‘gamstrang matranee pandiculated in the tykhana’. Translated into plain English, the tall and awkward female servant had yawned and stretched her body in the basement, the coolest part of the house.
It sounds weird to everyone except the Indian, who can understand two of the words. No one is sure it is wonderful. But some say it may make eminent publicity and commercial sense as Hindi, Urdu, Scots, Komi (spoken by people in an area of Russia) and Elizabethan English are forced to mate across linguistic time spans and zones for the new eponymous Dictionary of Weird and Wonderful Words.