Learning a foreign language is useful, whether it is for work, travel or for interacting with other people. But equally importantly, it helps our brain develop and helps us expand our intellectual capacity. It not only broadens our perception of the world, it teaches us different ways of looking at it.
Indeed, there are approximately six thousand languages spoken in the world and each of them succeeds in capturing the complexity of the human experience of a particular community.
the complexity of a word
Sometimes, however, this is entirely encapsulated in one seemingly simple device, one of the most sophisticated ever designed: a word that cannot be translated. Some such words are related to gastronomy, others to the history or character of a country’s people, or to a specific activity or custom, which is typical of a certain place. There lies to a great extent the beauty of the diversity of languages.
creating new words
Untranslatable words emerge through a variety of processes that are unique to each language, and that others cannot replicate exactly. Think of the German word ‘Schadenfreude’, a compound word for the guilty feeling of finding pleasure (Freude) in the misfortune of someone else (Schade). A quite universal feeling, but a word that only the Germans could coin. Or what about ‘utepils’, the Norwegian word for sitting outside on a sunny day enjoying a beer? These wonderful exceptions, to which one may add, among many others, the Japanese term ‘age-tori’ (looking worse after getting a new haircut), reminds us that the world is full of mystery. These are some of the most curious words that cannot be translated into English:
1 Flâneur
A word that reminds us of the cobbled streets of Paris, and cafés full of penniless wannabe poets. It was used for the first time in the 19th century by Charles Baudelaire to identify a new type of modern urban individual: one who wanders aimlessly around. An approximate English term could be: loafer, idler, dawdler or stroller.
2 Saudade
The bittersweet feeling of the Portuguese ‘saudade’ —a sort of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for something or someone that has been lost. Legend has it that it comes from Portuguese sailors and explorers feeling homesick when travelling to the Americas. In Brazil, there’s even an official day dedicated to ‘saudade’, celebrated on January 30th.
3 Hyggelig
A Danish word actually derived from another Norwegian word meaning ‘well-being’. It refers to something cosy and comfy, a concept which is widespread in Northern countries where the lack of sun had to be replaced by something homely and pleasant, even if it means staring out of the window with a hot cocoa.
4 Wanderlust
German creates words by combining different terms, especially nouns. While in English the resulting noun chains usually contain spaces or hyphens, in German they appear as one word. Similar to the French ‘flâneur‘, ‘Wanderlust’ (‘wander ’ + ‘lust’; actually two words that exist in English imported from German) defines a strong desire to wanderor travel and explore the world, and is of course deeply rooted in Romanticism, the most German of all intellectual movements.
5 Tsundoku
How many times have you bought a book but never read it? This in Japan is called ‘tsundoku’, a beautiful word used to describe the act of buying books but letting them pile up without ever reading them. The word consists of ‘tsunde-oku’ (to pile things up ready for later and leave them there) and ‘dokusho’ (reading books). Please don’t do that with Speak Up magazines!