Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
25 handy words that simply don’t exist In English
"Age-otori" is Japanese for looking worse after a haircut
I loved this find on the So Bad So Good website via yesterday's Metro - 25 words that don't exist in English.
Although English is the world's most widely spoken language, there are some words we just don't have. Many of those reflect particular facets of other cultures that I suppose we just don't feel it's important to recognise. Perhaps, the most famous example is the clutch of a dozen or so words in the Innuit language for snow versus our own single word (or two if you count sleet).
So Bad So Good came up with a serious but entertaining list of twenty five words, but I'm going to start off with my own contribution.
Lagom: Swedish word reflecting an important strand in Swedish culture, meaning just the right amount, not too much and not too little, without extremes. In a single word, lagom is said to describe the basis of the Swedish national psyche, one of consensus and equality. Despite a shift towards individualism and risk-taking in recent years, it is still widely considered ideal to be modest and avoid extremes.
Now here's a selection SBSG's 25:
Age-otori (Japanese): To look worse after a haircut .
Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude.
Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist .
Bakku-shan (Japanese): A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind .
Forelsket (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love .
Gigil (pronounced Gheegle; Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute.
Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time .
L’esprit de l’escalier (French): usually translated as “staircase wit,” is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it.
Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery .
Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire .
Nunchi (Korean): the subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. A socially clumsy person can be described as ‘nunchi eoptta’, meaning “absent of nunchi” .
Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation .
Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions .
Schadenfreude (German): the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain .
Sgriob (Gaelic): The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky.
Taarradhin (Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for “compromise,” in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement .
Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbour’s house until there is nothing left
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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No surprise that the Inuit may have a dozen or so words for snow because they get a lot of it.
But, compare with our at least 25 expressions describing rain -
Rain, Rainfall, Shower, Scotch mist, Downpour, Drizzle, Mizzle, Spits and spots, Cats and dogs, Precipitation, Drencher, Soaker, Cloudburst, Flurry, Teeming, Monsoon, Wet spell, Sheeting, Torrential, Bucketing, Pouring, Pelting, Pattering, Inundation, Stair rods.
Come on, Inuit, use your imagination and let's have some imagery
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Permalink Reply by Old-Age-Emporium(OAE) on
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When you build a long bridge between Sweden's self-proclaimed capital of Lagom and link it to the Danish ancient fjord of Hygge, then make an even longer TV Bridge of definitely un-hygge and un-lagomish detectives, it's bound to be unwatchable.
No, "hygge" (say, hooga)is what those ex-vikings have long paraded as their chief characteristic: cosy, convivial sentimentalism with lots of family squeezing together on a cold rainy night with beer, deer and candlelight, oozing cloyingly warm sanditoksvigisms at one another as they to-be-or-not-to-be over topping themselves or topping up their beer mugs. Yes, about as believable as Irish "céad míle míle fáilte"s to wangle in the tourists. And the Gaelic sgríob on the top lip is obviously Scottish Gaelic - we don't drink whisky in Ireland.
And while we're about it, isn't it long past time we consigned that great Inuit snow hoax to a nice bed of frozen slush? As Pinker puts it in his Language Instinct: "Speaking of anthropological canards, no discussion of language and thought would be complete without the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax. Contrary to popular belief, the Eskimos do not have more words for snow than do speakers of English. They do not have four hundred words for snow, as has been claimed in print, or two hundred, or one hundred, or forty-eight, or even nine. One dictionary puts the figure at two. Counting generously, experts can come up with about a dozen, but by such standards English would not be far behind.. . ."
But long before Steven Pinker, I thought Phil James's "The Eskimos' Hundred Words for Snow" had delivered the coup de grace. A brief extract:
alla-tla (baked snow)
fri-tla (fried snow)
gris-tla (deep fried snow) - an Inuit delicacy; Glasgow, ye're ainly in the ha'penny place!
Mac'tla (snow burgers)
briktla (good igloo-building snow)
striktla (snow that's shit for igloo-building)
tla-na-na (snow mixed with sound of old rock'n'roll from a portable radio)
Depp-tla (a small snowball, preserved in Lucite, that had been handled by Johnny Depp)
so'tla (snow in the south)
mo'tla (snow in the mouth)
tla-rin (snow that can be sculpted into the delicate corsages Inuit lassies pin to their whale parkas at prom time)
erolinyatla (snow drifts containing the imprints of crazy lovers)
A slush-filled hyggelich bricht snaelicht nicht to one and ae.And as for the mediocritas aurea of Swedish lagom: when it comes to my Swedish brother-in-law, too little is always too much IMHO. Farthinder, by the way, is still my favourite Swedish word. Not too much - not too little. They rather spoil it by insisting it just means 'sleeping policeman'.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Yes, interesting the snow thing. I found a lot of debunking of it on the web as I was writing the post, but settled on the information from Princeton University that I linked to as having the most authority. That article offers a convincing dozen or so words.
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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In italy it rains "catinelle" which a friend translated as "little saucepans" -very musical!
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Ah Thank You, Bakku-shan .. we had a job with a group called Bakku-shan where they spontaenously converted tweets into songs (within 5 minutes), one after the other. I didn't know what the name meant at the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VnMI4_SO-I usually avoid being in the video but am here in two very short 'Schnitte' My fav #62 Das Leben ist hart, ohne Oberlippenbart http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnNwZ9PJSVo Life is hard without a moustache
Hhm, Schadenfreunde unfortunately found occasionally in HoL discussions..
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Schadenfreunde is now found so often in English that, like "kindergarten", eventually it'll be thought of as an English word. A German friend refused to believe that "kindergarten" has been used in New Zealand for decades (120 years). The more English term 'nursery' is not used in NZ. I myself am a kindergarten alumnus.
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@Clive There are also German words that got big in the Anglo Saxon world and came back to Germany - like Delikatessen (de) which I think originally was just a term for eating good food.. i.e. delikat Essen. Delikatessen has been more used since WW2. And of course the approx. twenty year old 'Handy'.
I imagine words like Kindergarten went with German immigrants to NZ, which like AUS & USA there were many. German also influences how American English (or English spoken by a majority, who didn't have it as a mother tongue), quite a lot. For instance the Americans say " One hundred thirty", just like in German (Einhundertdreißig) whereas the English say 'One Hundred and Thirty' and there are other exmples like how they use syllables.. Caribbean & Leisure - both split up like in German.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Did the German word "handy" get "big in the Anglo Saxon world". Well, sort of. Thanks to Haringey libraries I could check.
"Handy" OED. a. Convenient to handle or hold in the hand; easy to be manipulated, managed, or directed. Examples given from: 1680; 1776; 1880; and 1897.
Etymology: Adapted from Handiwork: Old English hand-geweorc. Examples: 1175- hondiwerc. 1225:hondi werc. 1400: hondiwerke.
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Never said it did !
But if you want to really difficult, I'd suggest that Old English is really German .. Die Hand.. as spoken by the Saxons and Angles
OK?
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Gése.
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BTW Alan, another similar thing has happened with 'Overview' which I think is maybe directly translated from the German 'Überblick' ..?
I can't recall it being used thirty years ago .. synopsis or analysis always used to suffice
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