In the Pascuense language of Easter Island, the word tingo refers to a person who borrows objects from a friend’s house, one at a time, until there is nothing left. In the English language, no word exists for the concept of tingoism.

Language may influence our understanding of colour (having multiple words for different shades and colours makes it easier to recognise them) or orientation (linguistic variation in geographic descriptions). Conversely, perhaps the lack of words or the grammatical structure of the language one uses, establishes or influences one’s perception of the world.

Tingo forms part of Richard Denny’s on-going series of work, is the map the territory.