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Jessica Brown
Apr 21, 2017
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The English language has its limits.
Which is why our language, to cope with the many developments and evolutions of human life, has become a glorious hodgepodge of borrowed words and phrases from all over the world
Ands we think there is one word that you you need to add into your vocabulary immediately.
It’s Japanese though, so there’s a good chance people might look really confused when you use it.
The word is tsundoku, and it describes the habit of buying more books than we can read.
According to Quartz, Sahoko Ichikawa, a senior lecturer in Japanese at Cornell University, says tsunde means “to stack things” and oku means “to leave for a while.”
No doubt many people can relate. We have the best intentions in the book shop, but then back home, life gets in the way and books gather dust.
Lemony Snicket once said:
It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read.
But maybe tsundoku isn't such a bad thing.
One study found that quantity of books in one’s home was the most important predictor of reading performance.
Now if only there was a word to sum up the empty feeling of reaching the end of an article.
Or the annoyance one feels when reading a half finished senten
More: The countries that read the most books
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