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The untranslatable words that you love | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 9 of 61 31 October 2011 at 1:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I like sisu.
Otherwise, I love clever neologisms or creative ways of writing a word, like 恋哀 ren'ai: romantic love 恋愛, only that you replace one part of the 'love' 愛 with the same-sounding concept of 'grief' 哀, and 生欲 seiyoku: sexual/carnal desire 性欲 in which the character meaning 'sex' 性 is replaced by 'life' 生. Edited by Bao on 31 October 2011 at 8:29pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gerund Newbie United States Joined 4616 days ago 12 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 10 of 61 31 October 2011 at 2:06am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Very interesting! I have a couple eastern languages on my long-term language learning list, and this has further stoked that fire. You have reminded me of my experience training in Aikido, which evoked some good words that are hard to translate. My favorite, I think, is "Mushin" (無心), or "without mind." 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Matheus Senior Member Brazil Joined 4893 days ago 208 posts - 312 votes Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, French | Message 11 of 61 31 October 2011 at 2:58am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Yoroshiku Onegaishimasu よろしくおねがいします。
Link I would try to explain, but it is just too complex. Edited by Matheus on 31 October 2011 at 3:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 12 of 61 31 October 2011 at 3:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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夜路死苦! (By the way, if you read that link - writing the word in kanji is yankee style, as far as I am aware the yankee subculture invented in and did not choose an older ateji writing for an existing Japanese word, like in 寿司 sushi. It wouldn't make sense either way, as the adjective is 宜しい. not 宜しく) Edited by Bao on 31 October 2011 at 3:36am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| strikingstar Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4985 days ago 292 posts - 444 votes Speaks: English*, Mandarin*, Cantonese, Swahili Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written) | Message 13 of 61 31 October 2011 at 6:09am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I feel this has to take the cake.
Ailuromancy - the use of a cat's jumps to predict the weather Ailuromancy Also, this site is awesome. It has a list of the most obscure words in the English language. Most of them fit the criterion of not being translatable and just as many have the most ridiculous definitions. "Ailuromancy" is on this list as well. Obscure Words Edited by strikingstar on 31 October 2011 at 1:32pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6515 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 14 of 61 31 October 2011 at 7:25am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Isn't this close to the meaning of Gerund's "saudade", just with Brazil substituted for Wales? By the way, I would think that the proper translation for "gezellig" into Danish is "gemytlig", which is close to, but not quite the same as "hygge(lig)". The word "gemytlig" (German "gemütlich") comes from "gemyt", which is your personality type plus temperament, but also used in plural to refer to a group of persons ("at dæmpe gemytterne" = get people to behave). "Hygge" is primarily a substantive, and the definition at the start of the thread is not bad. "Cosiness" in English could have been a close companion if it hadn't been adopted by slick hotel chains. However it can also be used as a verb ("vi skal rigtig hygge (os) i aften" = we are going to establish a situation this evening which exudes the Danish notion of "hygge"), and the adjective is "gemytlig". "Gemytlig" is an adjective (something about being easygoing and informal, maybe with a beer or two somewhere in the landscape) and so is "hyggelig" (something about being easygoing and informal, often with some Danish cookies and a cup of coffee somewhere in the landscape) , but you cannot actively establish a "gemyt". Actually I'm wary about declaring that any notion is untranslatable - somebody might alsways bring up a word in some weird language with almost the same meaning, just referring to another society. Almost like when you can't sell champagne from Barcelona because a French locality owns the name - although the product can be produced in other places (and I still don't like it). Actually "Big Ben" in London and the "Arc de Triomphe" in Paris are untranslatable in this sense because they stand in resp. London and Paris and even if you made a precise copy in Tokyo or Yangon it wouldn't be quite the same thing. It is clear that a certain language sometimes has divided a semantical or grammatical camp in another way than another language and then you have to reformulate a whole idea in order to express yourself. But even for natives there might still be some word or expression you don't know, and declaring that 'no such thing is found in any language' is close to foolhardy. Maybe there is a good word for "hygge" in an obscure Amazonian language sung by 20 natives and one missionary? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| PaulLambeth Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5185 days ago 244 posts - 315 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Icelandic, Hindi, Irish | Message 15 of 61 31 October 2011 at 11:13am | IP Logged | ||||||||
I think by untranslatable the OP just meant 'words that don't have a comfortably concise equivalent in languages you know', with the language naturally equating to the culture. Nobody here is suggesting that none of the 6000 languages have the equivalent of sisu; there will definitely be culturally equivalent words identical in meaning in other languages, as in the Welsh example that you talked about at the beginning of your post. If one can define a word, but one has to put a qualifier 'it applies particularly to this specific culture', then the word can be deemed 'untranslatable' (as inaccurate as the term ends up being). However, I'm not suggesting either that nobody in the UK has ever felt hygge. But that we have to borrow it from Danish suggests its cultural applicability and untranslatability, because there has not evolved in English (at least, to the point that it is used frequently enough that most natives you question remember it) a succinct equivalent. Edited by PaulLambeth on 31 October 2011 at 11:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gerund Newbie United States Joined 4616 days ago 12 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 16 of 61 31 October 2011 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Yes. The conciseness is the key. As I understand Hygge, for example, that one word conjures up a rather complicated set of conditions and emotions. Not only that, but to explain them all in English would rob the scene of its essence. Before I encountered the word :hygge," I had never thought to even try characterizing an evening spent with friends in a candlelit room with a soft rain falling outside (and this hardly gets it quite right). Yet I would say that that sort of situation does evoke a certain complex set of feelings I have no other way of describing in my own langue (except through metaphor, I suppose). For the record, while I obviously implied translating words into English, I would be just as interested in hearing from native Russian speakers who have a favorite Spanish word they find difficult to translate. However, Iverson's point is well taken. I might amend my title to something like "the words that are difficult to translate without constructing awkward and clumsy sentences in your native tongue to find the equivalent meaning, that you love." :) That was a very interesting glance into the nuance of "hygge" versus other similar words--and exactly what is so damn interesting about language in the first place.
I love it! Defenestrate is another one I like. I suppose English does have a lot of weirdly archaic words along those lines. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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