Thursday, August 29, 2013

Do they have a word for that?

"The relationship between words and their meaning is a fascinating one, and linguists have spent countless years deconstructing it, taking it apart letter by letter, and trying to figure out why there are so many feelings and ideas that we cannot even put words to, and that our languages cannot identify."

11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures

1 | German: Waldeinsamkeit
A feeling of solitude, being alone in the woods and a connectedness to nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson even wrote a whole poem about it.


6  | Spanish: Sobremesa
Spaniards tend to be a sociable bunch, and this word describes the period of time after a meal when you have food-induced conversations with the people you have shared the meal with. 

8 | Hawaiian: Pana Poʻo
You know when you forget where you've put the keys, and you scratch your head because it somehow seems to help your remember? This is the word for it. 
Maptia

17 comments:

rhhardin said...

Forest aloneness, literally.

The Germans make it one word and then the one word acquires its own use.

edutcher said...

The first is, literally, on or above the table.

The French one is, literally, decountried.


The Hawaiian one is what Choom probably ought to do before shooting off his mouth.

ndspinelli said...

I'm looking for a word for "philosophical travel." Never mind I found it..BULLSHIT.

chickelit said...

The Germans also have the untranslatable word Genussmittel. The word means things consumed their enjoyment or pleasure value and includes things like coffee, tobacco, & chocolate, as opposed to things consumed for nutritive value.

Genussmittel comes from Genuss + mittel meaning means for + enjoyment.

edutcher said...

You mean like comfort food?

yashu said...

Wabi-sabi

Sehnsucht

The Dude said...

I looked up Jungian and all I found was fear of flying.

rhhardin said...

gnostalgia is a feeling of not remembering something like you used to.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

There should be a word for the despairing realization that it's only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.

ricpic said...

Sitzfleisch is a great German word for the ability to stick with a task when everything in you wants to get up and walk away.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

That's a very useful word Pollo.

chickelit said...

edutcher said...
You mean like comfort food?

No, comfort food could be mashed potatoes or prosciutto balls which are nutritious.

yashu said...

The Germans also have the untranslatable word Genussmittel. The word means things consumed their enjoyment or pleasure value and includes things like coffee, tobacco, & chocolate, as opposed to things consumed for nutritive value.

I wonder if this is related to St. Augustine's distinction (elaborated primarily in De doctrina christiana) between things to be enjoyed (frui) and things to be used (uti).

chickelit said...

Maybe so, yashu. German language seems to have been developed by sticklers for order.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

The Urdu word Goya is the same as verisimilitude.

Anonymous said...

Doch. Try to find an English word that translates exactly.

chickelit said...

That's another good one, Inga.