> * 積ん読 (Tsundoku) (Japanese): Buying books and never reading them, just letting them pile up.
i don't speak Thai or Mandarin, so I can't speak to the other 2, but this one is a pun (combining tsundeoku, pile up, and dokusho, book reading) that survived in the language due to its catchiness.
A bit like "hangry" (hungry + angry) in English.
I have a hard time interpreting the existence of those words as an indication that Japanese culture really values not reading the books you buy, or English speaking culture is irritated due to hunger more so than other cultures.
They're just meme-like constructs that caught on due to arbitrary phonetic properties of the language.
i don't speak Thai or Mandarin, so I can't speak to the other 2, but this one is a pun (combining tsundeoku, pile up, and dokusho, book reading) that survived in the language due to its catchiness.
A bit like "hangry" (hungry + angry) in English.
I have a hard time interpreting the existence of those words as an indication that Japanese culture really values not reading the books you buy, or English speaking culture is irritated due to hunger more so than other cultures.
They're just meme-like constructs that caught on due to arbitrary phonetic properties of the language.