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The untranslatable words that you love | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Gerund Newbie United States Joined 4616 days ago 12 posts - 17 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Swedish | Message 33 of 61 23 November 2011 at 2:01am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Just thought of a great word in English that I have a hard time defining in general:
"Goober." The Urban Dictionary comes close: "kindhearted, rather oblivious goofball. it's term of endearment really. it comes from the ancient scottish verb "to goub", which has to do with doing a dance and smiling sheepishly while doing so, exposing the goubs in one's teeth." 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
 meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5779 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 61 23 November 2011 at 4:21am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I have this book and it is really a fantastic resource for linguistic curiosities. Many of the words are transliterated from other scripts, or from spoken tradition, but I suppose that's necessary for a general audience. I've learned a few extremely colorful expressions in my target languages, too! The book is full of funny words that you'd never guess actually exist. I'm quoting from the text here - not responsible for inaccuracies, so please clarify if you know the language! A few examples, taken directly from the (much recommended) book: Wikumkewikus: It's moose-calling time (Mikmawisimk) ngaobera: A slight inflammation of the throat caused by screaming too much (Pascuense, Easter Island) neko-neko: To have a creative idea which only makes things worse (Indonesian) umjayanipxitutuwa: "They must have made me drink," an excuse for drinking too much (Aymara) jeruhuk: The act of stumbling into a hole that is concealed by long grass (Malay) tunillattukkuuq: The act of eating at a cemetery (Inuit) ngabanmarneyawoyhwarrgahganjginjeng: Example of an extremely polysynthetic verb, meaning "I cooked the wrong meat for them again" (Aboriginal Mayali) u: Example of one of the world's shortest words, meaningn "a man over forty-five" (Burmese) See the book for more hilarious language trivia! The author also has a blog here: The Meaning of Tingo blog Edited by meramarina on 23 November 2011 at 4:45am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 35 of 61 23 November 2011 at 6:50am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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A lot of those seem like grammatical constructions, rather than "words" in the sense we tend to think of them. I mean, I can say this word in Swedish:
Lökstekningsverktygstillverkarfordon This means "The vehicle used by a manufacturer of tools for frying onions". It's a word, and it's perfectly grammatical and understandable. But putting it in a book of untranslateable words would be a bit silly, since I'm probably the first one to ever use it, and I could construct a hundred words like it on the spot. Some of those words are a bit better, though (although I suspect "u" is probably a pronoun that just happens to be used with men over 45, so a grammatical rather than lexical oddity). I'll add another one from Swedish: a real, not constructed, word that is used occasionally: "tvesovla". It means "To put two different kinds of stuff (such as cheese and ham) on your sandwich". And another one that I use frequently and I've heard other people use, though it's not "common" by any means: "svårpåfåtagbar". Means "Difficult to get a hold of (of person)". So if you're calling someone and they never pick up the phone, and you come by their office and they just left, they're very svårpåfåtagbar. EDIT: By the way, here's the way to say "The act of eating at a cemetery" in Swedish: kyrkogårdsätande. There's some ambiguity in the construction (it could be interpreted as "the act of eating a cemetary"), but that's probably the way I'd construct it. You can make it clearer by saying "påkyrkogårdsätande", but we usually leave out the prepositions in these kinds of constructions of they're not really needed. Edited by Ari on 23 November 2011 at 6:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| DNB Bilingual Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4698 days ago 47 posts - 80 votes Speaks: Finnish*, Estonian*, English | Message 36 of 61 23 November 2011 at 5:47pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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I think Arguelles brought this up in his famous Korean Overview-thread, but I'm still
going to mention it because it has such a range of usages. Nunchi, pronounced noonchi in English (눈치). Usually, a dictionary would tell it means just senses or wits, but it has more than that. It's a mutual atmosphere of disguised statements in a social situation. For example, imagine you are eating with a group of people, then someone starts telling really bad jokes. You can clearly notice the awkward atmosphere, but the joketeller keeps joking without realizing the situation. Koreans would literally say this person telling jokes has a slow 'nunchi', and it has many more usages than that. Edited by DNB on 23 November 2011 at 8:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| meramarina Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5779 days ago 1341 posts - 2303 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Italian, French Personal Language Map | Message 37 of 61 23 November 2011 at 7:30pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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The book does sometimes explain the particular grammatical contruction of a term but I haven't included any of that bhere - I just chose a few amusing examples. It's true that the book mostly doesn't go into enough detail to satisfy true language nerds like us, but it's pretty entertaining nonetheless.
I had no idea the eating in a cemetery was done at all, much less specifically spoken about in more than one language! As for the word "goobers" mentioned earlier in this thread, this word is also used in the Southern USA to mean peanuts, or "goober peas." They were a source of protein for soldiers in the Civil War, and boiled green peanuts are a popular snack there even now. I can't stand the things, but I have relatives who love them. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6394 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 38 of 61 24 November 2011 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I'm not sure it is. I've never heard the word "kyrkogårdsätande" before in my life, so I don't think it's very commonly used. I might even be the first person ever to use it. It's a word in Swedish, but that doesn't really say anything about the Swedes or Swedish culture. Swedish grammar allows these words to be created on the fly. --- I saw the word "rysskyla" on a tabloid the other day. That's the first time I ever saw that word, but it's readily understandable. And it's probably impossible to translate into English. We'd tranlate it as "Russian cold", which seems pretty straightforward, but if you translate "Russian cold" into Swedish, you'd get "Rysk kyla". That means a cold that comes from Russia (we're talking about weather). But "Rysskyla" is something else, not just a cold that comes from Russia, but a cold that's somehow Russian in essence. It brings images of Siberia and freezing Russian winters. This distinction can't be made in English. There's a difference between a "nakenbadare" and a "naken badare". The latter is a swimmer who happens to be naked, but the former is a person who swims naked. It's part of his or her identity. Same thing with "kyrkogårdsätande", actually. "äta på kyrkogården" means "to eat in the cemetary", but "kyrkogårdsätande" makes it a thing. It's a pretty cool grammatical feature of Swedish. You make it into a word (and we do that all the time) and you make it a thing. It's kinda like the "ser" and "estar" of Spanish. 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5132 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 39 of 61 24 November 2011 at 9:08am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
I only had a look at the first chapters and noticed several slightly inadequately translated German expressions, for example, "die beleidigte Leberwurst spielen" (=to act like a primadonna) which he defines as "to stick one’s lower lip out sulkily (literally, to play the insulted liver sausage)." I also saw several expressions that neither I nor other Germans have ever heard of. For example, he mentions
and
At least for German, you may want to take his examples with a grain of salt. 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 40 of 61 24 November 2011 at 10:12am | IP Logged | |||||||||||
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Korean 'nunchi' seems close to German "Fingerspitzengefühl" and Danish "Fingerspidsfornemmelse" - which has nothing to do with your fingertips.
Many of the other expressions in this thread seem to be either slang expressions or word combinations made up on the spot in languages which permit this. If such an expression becomes sufficiently specific it will automatically become less likely that another language has one single word for the same thing - but maybe you are allowed to construct one. Right now I'm thinking about one of the few Danish words which have had an international career: "køkkenmødding". Strictly speaking it just means "kitchen midden", but you only use the word about heaps of oyster shells (with some fish bones and other stuff) made by stone age people who lived in and on their own waste piles which just grew and grew - and in this particular culture oysters were a very large part of the diet (and one which left lots of debris). In French you can now say "amas coquiller", but originally even the proud French Frenchmen from France adopted the Danish term. Which illustrates a problem: if you really need a word and know it exists in another language you can borrow it from there, but nothing hinders you from coining a new word, and maybe you can convince your countrymen to use it. However you won't do it unless you feel that it would be nice to have such a word. The truly untranslatable words are hard to find. If you find one you can just translate or borrow it, and then it isn't untranslatable any more. Edited by Iversen on 24 November 2011 at 11:57am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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