In my previous life, I was a linguist in the US Army, Polish and Vietnamese. But I’ve always been a language nerd. Even now, I’m learning Swedish because, well, just because. So, yes, I nerd out for language things. Yesterday, I ran across a meme about nonsense words in different languages, which led me to this!!
Welcome to my multilingual list of words/phrases used like “thingamajig.”
- Hawaiian Pidgin: da kine
- Korean: 뭐뭐뭐 (mwomwomwo)
- Norwegian: mäsmäsak
- Welsh: pethma
- Māori: mea
- Ojibwe: ii’ii
- Japanese: なになに (nani nani)
- Hindi: फ़लाँ (falāñ)
- Vietnamese: classifier + gì đó
- Bengali: ইয়ে (iay)
- Swedish: grej
- Yoruba: lagbja
- Hmong: yam lus
sources:
- Google Translate
- “Thingamajig” on Omniglot
That’s cool. I took Spanish and Latin in high school and apparently promptly forgot all but the basics. Didn’t use it and lost it, I suppose.
I wouldn’t try to pronounce it, but the Korean word is pretty neat looking!
Ha Ha! yam lus struck me most. ‘what’s his name?’
This is an interesting list!