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Words that don’t exist in English... | ||
Tags: Language Trivia | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4933 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 1 of 26 13 September 2012 at 7:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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This article (http://bigthink.com/marriage-30/the-top-10-relationship-wor ds-that-
arent- translatable-into-english?page=2) came across my twitter feed this morning, and I thought I'd share it. I'm not so sure that some of these words don't actually exist in English, although maybe not a single word (and frankly, I think it's somewhat disingenuous in giving "untranslatable" multiple-word groups, then stating they can't be effectively translated.) In any case, enjoy. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 13 September 2012 at 7:23pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5335 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 26 13 September 2012 at 7:54pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I suspect shenanigans (on the part of the author, not you). Does the following phrase really exist in French?
When I ran a Google search on "la douleur exquise", it gave me lots of sites talking about Sex and the City, all of which were in English. So I re-ran the search exclusively in French, and Google gave me mostly French medical sites talking about acute pain. Sure, this phrase makes perfect metaphorical sense in French, just like it would in English. But I haven't been able to find any evidence that this is a commonly-used phrase in French, unless you're talking about the medical community. I'm always fascinated by phrases like à la mode (in English) and un smoking (in French), which seem to be some sort of linguistic expatriates. They enjoy living abroad, so to speak, but nobody's ever seen them at home. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4468 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 3 of 26 13 September 2012 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
"Un smoking" meaning this? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Peregrinus Senior Member United States Joined 4295 days ago 149 posts - 273 votes Speaks: English* | Message 4 of 26 13 September 2012 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I think the real shenanigans is the implicit assumption by the author that if a word or phrase that he gave cannot be translated into English by the same number of words or less, then it is not translatable. We all know many words don't have exact one-to-one correspondences to a close word in another language, with one language having a broader or narrower concept. So if it takes an entire sentence (or more) to translate such a concept (which is a better term than word/phrase/idiom for this purpose), then it is in fact translatable.
Though I have never studied Japanese, I have read about many Japanese aesthetical concepts that require such wordy definitions in English. Nonetheless, the wordy translations do get the point across. However, I would use the more compact foreign word or phrase if discussing such concepts in English, once the definition was clear. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6385 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 5 of 26 14 September 2012 at 8:01am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is also what the garment is called in Swedish. I guess a loan from French? EDIT: And, looking at the Wikipedia pages, also in Spanish, Turkish, Polish, German, Dutch, Hungarian, Esperanto, Lithuanian, Czech, Finnish ... It seems pretty much the only language in which it's not called a "smoking" is English. Edited by Ari on 14 September 2012 at 8:22am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4575 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 6 of 26 14 September 2012 at 9:56am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Edit: honestly, no pun intended :D Edited by vonPeterhof on 14 September 2012 at 9:57am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| tastyonions Triglot Senior Member United States goo.gl/UIdChYRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4468 days ago 1044 posts - 1823 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish Studies: Italian | Message 7 of 26 14 September 2012 at 3:05pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
This is definitely one of the most amusing "word migrations" I have come across. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DaraghM Diglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 5954 days ago 1947 posts - 2923 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Russian, Hungarian | Message 8 of 26 14 September 2012 at 3:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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French has a few more words like this. The ones I know are,
Un brushing - a blow dry Un parking - a carpark Un camping - a camp ground Un pressing - a large walk in closet. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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