Words with No English Equivalent

[ysabetwordsmith]

I was amused by this list of foreign words, courtesy of my_partner_doug.

Comments

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Kummerspeck. That's one I can certainly use. Lots of cool stuff in there, actually.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I love word salad like this.

[mejeep.livejournal.com]

thanks! I occasionally wonder if I'd work and think faster or better if I had a different language as a 'mother tongue' or were better in other languages. Too many things I think to myself are clearly in English, but there are wonderful times I can transcend that and think totally in abstract concepts without words.

I adore the samples of words that are useful but somehow never made it into English.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

English is my native language. I've studied three others formally, picked up fragments of others on my own, and then there's all the xenolinguistics stuff. It's quite common for me to think of a concept that doesn't fit well into English.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

When I was in practice enough with my German that I could think and speak directly in German (rather than putting the thought together in English and then translating it), there were a couple of times when I noticed concepts coming together in ways they wouldn't have if I'd been thinking in English.

Can't think of specific examples right now because it's past my bedtime and my brain's a little fried, but I know there were a few.

I also rather like listening to music that's in English, but written by non-native speakers of English. They come up with some really cool phrasings and ways of expressing concepts or thoughts that a native English speaker never would have used.

Yes...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I find that thinking in another language does influence the way I perceive or describe things. To a lesser effect this also happens if I just spend a lot of time working with a particular language.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Bakku-shan DOES have a kind-of English equivalent. The English equivalent, in slang, is "butter face." As in, "Every part of her was hot but her face."

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Trai'Pahg'Nan'Nog has a few words like these, IE words that don't have equivalents in English.

zoquendoh = the inability to reach a decision as a result of emotions.

iknahkuuk = the condition of being emotionally "torn”

ikzoquendoh = zoquendoh as a result of iknahkuuk.

iikiinya = emotional pain

iikaia’vrahn’dwahna = The desire to return to childhood as a result of emotional pain, despair, and sorrow.

Different words for different kinds of love:

Yihn’bahn = Just friends.
Yihn’dae’vahn = Close friendship.
Yihn’dway’lahn = Closest friendship.
Krii'taekahl = Cool romance.
Yihn'taekahl = Romance that lasts forever.
Hihn'D'bahn = acquaintance
Tae’kahl = Romantic love
Yihn’taek = friend love
Morph'taekahl = Passionate love.

ah’ay’oh’no’lai’oh = sweet, charming, romantic

ay'lah'kahn'jah = A spiritual journey in which one gets lost on purpose in order to find hirself in more ways than one.

There's even a word for covering your eyes in a dark room and your brain making up patterns of light, but I forget what the word was.

By the way, that reminds me. I should come up with a TPNN word for "the bright light your brain sometimes thinks it sees in your periferal vision despite you being in a dark room with your eyes closed." Because that's something else that happens to me sometimes. I'll sometimes see light as bright as sunlight in my periferal vision as I'm trying to get to sleep. If I turn my eyes to look at it directly, it disappears.

Thank you!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

These are good terms.

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Since we're on this topic, I'll move on to words I've coined with intent for them to be spoken in English:

1. Faux poo = That sensation you get, after having taken a poo, that you have to poo again, only you can't because there isn't really anything there anymore.

2. Advertainment [ad-ver-tain-ment] = 1. Noun. Entertainment that is a thinly-veiled advertisement. 2. Noun. Any entertainment which uses advertising tactics to boost ratings.

3. Deja phew: Getting hit with so many deja vus at once that you're overwhelmed and just want it to stop.

4. Partrade [parr-trade] = n. A moving party, a festive celebration that moves along like a parade. v. To festively celebrate while moving along like a parade. Origin: combined party and parade.

5. Dishentery [dish-en-terry] = A disease caused by eating food or drink that's been served from dirty dishes. Example: After eating at Lauren's house, I realized she must not have washed her dishes very well, because I was sick for a week afterward with dishentery.

6. sarcaustic = Being sarcastic with an intense amount of venom in one's voice; hatefully sarcastic.

7. Occuply - verb. To increase the number of places one occupies at one time, assuming one can multi-locate.* Origin: misspelling that lead to combining "occupy" and "multiply."

8. Guerilla turd - An urge to poop that hits you hard and fast without warning, like a guerilla soldier coming out of the bushes, and you HAVE to poop NOW or you will shit your pants.

9. Whatknot: n. A knot that, on inspection, appears to be totally impossible; they usually form completely on their own and show up most frequently in cords for electronics. Only when they are untangled - either by skill or by luck - do they seem plausible, yet it remains a mystery how they formed to begin with. Example: "People in my house get these impossible knots in things all the time, and I'm always the one that has to untangle the darned whatknots."

10. wypoo = The sensation, after wiping one's butt, of having to poop again, which is caused by the stimulation of the anus by the hand.

11. Kung poo = n. The art of using shit as a weapon.

12. Piss fu = n. The art of using pee as a weapon.

13. Incestor = n. A person from whom one is descended, assuming "one" was the product of an incestual relationship. Origin: combined "incest" and "ancestor."

14. wanking poetic = being all angsty and emo and making it all artsy with pretty words.

15. Hoime [hoym} = 1. n. A place of residence, a shelter for the body but not a comfort to the mind or spirit. A place where one lives but has no affection for, or may even hate the place and/or other people within it, or the people one lives with are merely roommates and very difficult to put up with. Example: "Home is where the heart is, hoime is where the heart is NOT."
2. adj. Of, pertaining to, or connected with one's hoime or country, domestic: hoime products.

16. hoiam [pronounced hoy-aam] = A place of residence, a shelter for the body but not much of a comfort to the mind or spirit. A place where one lives but has little affection for, or may even hate the place and/or most of the other people within it, or most of the people one lives with are merely roommates and very difficult to put up with. Differs from the word "hoime" in that there is at least one person (a human person) there that you like and/or love. People you have no opinion of either way don't count either. Example: "Home is where the heart is, hoiam is where the heart is NOT. For the most part."
2. adj. Of, pertaining to, or connected with one's hoiam or country, domestic: hoiam products.

17. oikay [oy-kay] = adj. 1. To be okay, but to be completely unsure how you managed it. 2. An expression of dismay, said when one is not really okay but is resigned to one's fate. Origin: combined "okay" and "oy vey."

18. ewxample [yukes-amp-ull] = n. A very bad and/or gross example of something.

19. Mislexia. - From mis- and dyslexia. n. Whereas dyslexia is caused by a difference in how one perceives spaces, mislexia is simply a misreading of which word it is. For example, mis-reading "marinara" as "marijuana" is an example of mislexia.

20. Misaudia - Like mislexia, only it's mishearing a word rather than misreading it.

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite is hoime. We do need a word for non-home.

Re: Wow!

[fayanora.livejournal.com]

Feel free to use any of them in your writing. I want my babies to spread and infect the brains of as many English speakers as possible.

Heh, there I go thinking of words as memes, as living beings. :-)

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

I'm in love with language-specific, no-direct-equivalent words, they really can set one to thinking or give a different perspective about something.

Number 3 on the list should be 'lampadato', no 's'.
We also say of someone you haven't seen for a while who suddenly sports an artificial tan 'S/he's been to the Lampados'.

*laugh*

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

This is so cool.

[daev.livejournal.com]

Some useful nouns in Yoruba, a language of West Africa:

a-gbóti-kèkè-mà-gbe-ìyàwó, he who spends his resources entertaining people with alcoholic drinks without anything in particular to celebrate.

a-dà-ni-dúró-d'onígbèsè, he who stops you with idle talk until a creditor catches up with you.

akídìndìnrin tíí mó'jú òru ògànjó, a nitwit who makes faces at people at the darkest hour of the night.

ojú kò'nkò konko, sharp and protruding eyeballs.

a-mú-ni-t'òkèlè-bo'mú, he who causes another person so much confusion that he pushes a morsel of food into his nostrils instead of his mouth.

(source: Joe McNally via Ansible)

Yay!

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I love these. Thanks for sharing!

[rhodielady-47.livejournal.com]

Years ago, I was amused by one of my language teachers telling us about a sign she'd seen that read "Give the grass a break" and how insanely hard it was to try and translate that into another language.
I'm suddenly bemused with thoughts of how you'd go about translating American words like "boogie" and "booger" or phrases like "bathtub saints".
:)

Hmm...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

Translating the words directly doesn't work. Either you look for a matching idiom and use that, or you figure out the base concept and translate it as a description.

Re: Hmm...

[rhodielady-47.livejournal.com]

True, but it sure does lose something in translation. You gotta love our idioms.
:)

[rhodielady-47.livejournal.com]

Now here's a really difficult phrase to try and translate into another language:
From Black English: "Bumping a fool's head".
(Southern Black English has a large number of surprisingly complex phrases and sayings in it.)
:]

[natalief.livejournal.com]

There's a great word in Dutch and I think there is a similar word starting with U (iirc) in one of the Scandinavian (?) languages:

gezellig