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[Alx]

There really should be a language learning OT in Off Topic Community.

Definitely. I once considered creating one dedicated to swear words and slang, since it's not the kind of thing you usually learn at school, although it can prove very useful.

 

[VindicatorZ]

I find that no English phrase or word captures the true sense of "sin verguenza". For English gaf, it means without shame, but that doesn't capture it for me. Thoughts, spanishgaf?

For me, sin veguenza is almost like saying "A piece of shit" "El es un sin verguenza" = "He's a fucking piece of shit"

Haha, You're right, sin verguenza is a pretty intense term.

 

[SecretMoblin]

There really should be a language learning OT in Off Topic Community.

we have this thread that kinda turned into that but few people post in it anymore

there is also a thread for English language learners, one for Japanese language learners, and non-English threads for most of the big groups of speakers represented on GAF, and the Duolingo one

and there are always threads that pop up about language and even language learning, like the Canadian dude who wanted to 'casually' learn Russian or the interesting debate about English loanwords in Japanese

but by far most of the language threads are complaints about English usage (the use of literally, gif pronunciation, apostrophe complaints, pining for pre-internet English, British v. American usage, etc.)

I'm just not sure a thread about language in general would last long :/

 

[Randam]

The German word kummerspeck is the best. It means weight gained because you ate more due to sadness. Translated literally? Grief bacon.

Hab ich noch nie gehört.

 

[Volimar]

vosotro in Spanish always seemed odd to me. Probably because it makes me grin thinking of someone saying "y'all" in a different language.

 

[marimorimo]

I translate a lot of stuff at work, and have come across too many "untranslatable" words or phrases. By that, I mean that translating the word/phrase is either 1) pointless/awkward in the target language IN THE CONTEXT it was used, or 2) translation loses a good amount of nuance/meaning of the original.

2) is especially prevalent in Japanese. The ambiguity of sentences that do not require a subject, plus the quirks of the Japanese language and culture are inevitably lost in translation.

The most common examples are in sentences that include giving and receiving verbs such as -morau, -itadaku, -kureru, -sashiageru, -yaru, etc. Sentences including these verbs clearly indicate the status and even personality/politeness of the speaker relative to the listener, and it's hard to express that without doing cartwheels in English.

Non-Japanese examples:

Lugud - from my regional Philippine language meaning "love", but without any romantic connotations whatsoever. It also has a nuance of goodness, and purity of heart.

Malandi - slutty, flirty, but could have playful (even innocent) connotations depending on usage.

 

[Fritz]

I never knew how to translate "that was random" into german. Like for example you walk down the street and see a pitbull terrier ride a skateboard towards you, hand you a five bucks and drive off singing the national anthem of china.
You could say "That was random", but theres no literal translation for that in german as far as i know. willkürlich? nicht ganz.

I just use random. I think the German equivalent would be zufällig but it just doesn't cut it.

 

[eot]

A word that I miss when speaking English is the Swedish 'jo'. It means 'yes', but it's only used to affirmatively answer a negated question. For example:
"Aren't you coming"
"Yes"
That sounds odd to me because you're agreeing with the negated statement when in fact you mean the opposite. You have to say "I am" or something instead. In Swedish you can just say 'jo', it's unambiguous.

Another handy Swedish word is "orka". A literal translation would be "to have the energy to do <something>". It's a good way of expressing laziness, you can just use it as an exclamation:
"Orka städa!"
'Städa' means to clean, so the exclamation is something like "cleaning is too much effort". It's hard to find a good translation because most of the meaning is implicit, the word is so vague. It's a bit like "fuck" in that you can use it tons of different ways.

 

[electricshake]

Slightly OT but one of my favourite words, outwith, is only used in Scotland apparently. What do non-Scots use as the opposite of within? Eg 'that's not within the scope of my responsibilities'

 

[SecretMoblin]

Slightly OT but one of my favourite words, outwith, is only used in Scotland apparently. What do non-Scots use as the opposite of within? Eg 'that's not within the scope of my responsibilities'

beyond?

"That's beyond the scope of my responsibilities"

or I guess 'outside'/'outside of' works, too: "That's outside the scope of my responsibilities"

 

[Irminsul]

I just use random. I think the German equivalent would be zufällig but it just doesn't cut it.

That would be "seltsam" to me.

 

[whatsinaname]

Is there any language that has the same word for yesterday and tomorrow? I know Hindi does and it always made me wonder. (Especially for a language that has separate words for day after tomorrow, 2 days after tomorrow, etc)

 

[Mac_Lane]

I think that the French verb défenestrer, meaning throwing someone out the window, cannot be translated.

The same goes for its pronominal form se défenestrer : throwing oneself out the window.

 

[Haemi]

That would be "seltsam" to me.

I would say random = willkürlich.

And here one of the longest words in the german language:

Rind­fleisch­eti­ket­tie­rungs­über­wa­chungs­auf­ga­ben­über­tra­gungs­ge­setz

 

[Hypron]

Definitely. I once considered creating one dedicated to swear words and slang, since it's not the kind of thing you usually learn at school, although it can prove very useful.

Really? The first things kids in my classes did was to look up all the swear words in the dictionary back when I was in school haha.

 

[Hypron]

A word that I miss when speaking English is the Swedish 'jo'. It means 'yes', but it's only used to affirmatively answer a negated question. For example:
"Aren't you coming"
"Yes"
That sounds odd to me because you're agreeing with the negated statement when in fact you mean the opposite. You have to say "I am" or something instead. In Swedish you can just say 'jo', it's unambiguous.

Yeah French has something similar, "si", and it's a very practical word.

Oops, double post, sorry.

 

[Alx]

Really? The first things kids in my classes did was to look up all the swear words in the dictionary back when I was in school haha.

Yeah we all did, but using swear words correctly is an art in itself. One could write a whole book on the use of "con" and all its variants in French, which can have very different meanings (gros con, pauvre con, petit con, connard/asse, t'es trop con, tu déconnes, ça déconne, déconne pas, ...)

 

[kiyoaki]

Hab ich noch nie gehört.

It's quite common. "Sie hat sich Kummerspeck angefressen, weil er sie verlassen hat", etc.

Japanese has a lot of these cultural keywords or concepts that are hard to translate into other languages and can be really interesting (even if their relevance to actual modern Japanese culture is often exaggerated). Yûgen, mono no aware, amae, aizuchi, kikubari...

My favorite Japanese expressions are the ones that have readily identifiable equivalents in other languages but put a special twist on the concept through original images or kanji usage.

Spoiler

Like &#20096;&#38957;

 

[electricshake]

beyond?

"That's beyond the scope of my responsibilities"

or I guess 'outside'/'outside of' works, too: "That's outside the scope of my responsibilities"

Oh yeh these totally work. Still prefer outwith though haha.

 

[terrisus]

Fernweh (German): The opposite of being homesick. Longing for travel and experiences in far away places. (lit.: far / afar - woe/hurt)

Wanderlust.

 

[terrisus]

Because hola and ola are different words with different meanings.

But they're pronounced exactly the same...

Yeah, I know we do the same thing in English (know/no for instance), but to have a specific letter with absolutely no pronunciation just seems strange.

 

[JulianImp]

I think that the French verb défenestrer, meaning throwing someone out the window, cannot be translated.

The same goes for its pronominal form se défenestrer : throwing oneself out the window.

In Spanish, we appropriated that as a loanword as "defenestrar".

Slang born at Rio de la Plata (which is shared by Argentina and Uruguay) is quite rich in its mixture of languages, mostly borrowing from Italian, but also from other european languages such as French and English as well (and perhaps other languages I don't know about, such as Polish).

Talking about logic applied to answers, I know Japanese also uses "Yes" to negatively answer a question such as "Did you not <X>?", while it's the other way around in Spanish. For example, answering "No" to "No lavaste los platos?" would mean that you didn't wash the dishes, even though logically speaking you'd be doing a double negation, which would turn the sentence from "I didn't not wash the dishes" into "I did wash the dishes".

Also, here's another argentine idiom: "hacer la cama" (lit: to do a bed) is used for setting someone up for something bad. I guess could be partially translated as "having <person> take the fall/blame", except most of the time "hacerle la cama a alguien" means the fall was set up behind that person (or people)'s back exclusively.

 

[Pluto]

Hab ich noch nie gehört.

It's pretty common where I live, maybe it's a regional thing.

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

Wow, great responses, guys! Gotta love GAF's cosmopolitan nature



Wow, that's truthly fascinating, indeed! It would seem to me that Tuyuca language would make for a society where journalistic integrity is a thing evidential languages are an incredible concept that would have helped a lot in our overinformed world, me thinks.



Hahaha, well, great minds thinks alike but after reading books about neurolingüistics it seems that it works backwards: our language shapes and filters our reality and thus, our perception of it, rather than being the other way around.

That means that for example, that if the Russian language makes a distinction between dark blue and light blue, Russians will become more apt than other people at distinguishing these two colors due to how the language wired their neurons, not the other way around (Russians having eyes specialized in seeing the colour blue and thus, creating different words for its many shades as a latter thought).



Yup, exactly! Also, it is extremely useful to learn about these foreign taste descriptors. For example, I think that it is great that the word "umami" is being used in my country in order to better describe many of our traditional Spanish dishes, even if the word was Japanese on its origin. I think that it would be great if we would adopt more foreign un-translatabl concepts, for it would expand and enrich our conceptual spectrum.




A language with no concept of dates or time? This seems very apt for our bureaucratic aparatus to learn



Nope, "incómodo" means "uncomfortable", it doesn't have the social connotations of "awkward".



Temor is not fear. Fear = Miedo. Afraid = Asustado / asustar

Afraid is not asustado. Asustado (or espantado) is scared.

I got scared when I heard noises at night.
Me asuste (espante) cuando escuché ruidos en la noche.

Fear is temor without a doubt, bud.
Look up some biblical verses and you'll see how this is true. Fear is a type of emotion that is born out of respect and reverence.


Miedo is also most certainly the most direct translation of afraid.

I'm afraid of the dog.
Le tengo miedo al perro.

 

[NeoGiff]

There is no exact word for "Hello" in Irish/Gaeilge (those of you in the U.S. probably know it as Gaelic). The phrase that is used instead is "Dia duit", which, literally translated, means "God be with you." That speaks to the deeply religious background of our little country!

EDIT: The correct response to this is "Dia is Muire duit", which means "God and Mary be with you." It's like a battle of religious terminology.

 

[Lapidus' Beard]

Gezellig(heid) even had a wiki page because it's unique

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gezelligheid

Seems like we use it in more situations then you use koselig

Jeremy Clarkson on the Dutch word "gezellig"

 

[Groof]

So did anyone mention the Swedish word fika yet?

Fika is both a Swedish verb and noun (pronounced "fee-ka") that basically implies "drinking coffee", usually accompanied by something sweet.[1] More recently, a more contemporary generalised meaning of the word, where the coffee may be replaced by tea or even juice, lemonade, squash etc. for the children, has become widespread. In some social circles, even a smörgås or a small meal may be denoted "a fika". In Sweden pastries in general (for example cinnamon buns) are often referred to as fikabröd meaning fika-bread.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fika_(coffee_break)

 

[Baconsaurus Rex]

Is there a difference between Schadenfreude and the Dutch leedvermaak?

 

[DiipuSurotu]

"Serendipity". An unexpected, but fortunate, discovery that happens by accident. Many languages simply take the English word and adapt it to their grammar and pronunciation (for example "sérendipité" in French), but only in English is it a native concept. Sérendipité in French doesn't sound natural at all.

"Good morning" and "Good afternoon". These greetings don't exist in French (I'm sure they do in other languages though). You just say "Bonjour" for both and it means literally "Good day". However, "Bonsoir" for "Good evening" does exist.

"Fuck". I've always been fascinated by the grammatical flexibility of this word in English. It can be a transitive verb (X fucks Y), an intransitive verb (he fucked up), a noun (I don't give a fuck), an adjective (a fucking idiot), an adverb (I don't fucking understand), a quantity (a fuckton), etc. There's generally no single, universal translation for these and you have to translate based on the context.

 

[Hollycat]

Fernweh (German): The opposite of being homesick. Longing for travel and experiences in far away places. (lit.: far / afar - woe/hurt)

Wanderlust?

 

[Daweex]

"Fuck". I've always been fascinated by the grammatical flexibility of this word in English. It can be a transitive verb (X fucks Y), an intransitive verb (he fucked up), a noun (I don't give a fuck), an adjective (a fucking idiot), an adverb (I don't fucking understand), a quantity (a fuckton), etc. There's generally no single, universal translation for these and you have to translate based on the context.

Italian's ''Cazzo'' is even more flexible.

Speaking of which, Italian is pretty much the best language for swearing.

 

[Alx]

That means that for example, that if the Russian language makes a distinction between dark blue and light blue, Russians will become more apt than other people at distinguishing these two colors due to how the language wired their neurons, not the other way around (Russians having eyes specialized in seeing the colour blue and thus, creating different words for its many shades as a latter thought).

It also works the other way, to make you lose the perception of subtleties. My father was born in Vietnam, and apparently they use the same word for "blue" and "green" in Vietnamese. Despite coming to France at a young age and being more fluent in French than Vietnamese now, he still sometimes confuses both colors, even if he has no color-blindness issue.

 

[crazygambit]

I've found there's no equivalent for the English word "liability" in Spanish, I don't know about other languages. To explain such a concept you would need quite a few words.

There is. "Pasivo" is a liability. Of course pasivo also means passive, so it has to be understood from the context that the meaning is liability.

But they're pronounced exactly the same...

Yeah, I know we do the same thing in English (know/no for instance), but to have a specific letter with absolutely no pronunciation just seems strange.

It's a remnant of old Spanish. It wasn't always without pronunciation. It had an f sound. In fact you can still see it in some words. For example fierro and hierro mean exactly the same (iron) and are both used today.

 

[TheDeadHeroAlistair]

A word that I miss when speaking English is the Swedish 'jo'. It means 'yes', but it's only used to affirmatively answer a negated question. For example:
"Aren't you coming"
"Yes"
That sounds odd to me because you're agreeing with the negated statement when in fact you mean the opposite. You have to say "I am" or something instead. In Swedish you can just say 'jo', it's unambiguous.

I wouldn't quite say that. Were I live, we use the "yeah" form of "yes," but with a different intonation. The contour starts off high, falls, then raises again. But it may be an accidental/dialectal thing.

 

[DiipuSurotu]

It also works the other way, to make you lose the perception of subtleties. My father was born in Vietnam, and apparently they use the same word for "blue" and "green" in Vietnamese. Despite coming to France at a young age and being more fluent in French than Vietnamese now, he still sometimes confuses both colors, even if he has no color-blindness issue.

It might depend on the regions but my parents who are Vietnamese can definitely tell the difference between blue and green, but it's just that the two are considered variations of the same color instead of two distinct colors. "Blue" in Vietnamese is called "xanh". "Green" is called either "xanh" or "xanh lá cây" (literally "plant-leaf xanh").

So my parents can tell the difference but they sometime don't feel the need to specify which "xanh" they're referring to. Kinda like when you describe something as gray instead of "light gray" or "dark gray" because you didn't feel the need to be so specific.

 

[Metal B]

So i was looking, if the French term "L'esprit de l'escalier" is unique, but it already got its English Term "Afterwit". So it isn't so special anymore. Both means the wisdom you have after an event. While the French term is more symbolic, since it reference getting the wisdom after leaving the room and going down the stairs: "If i just had said or done that!".

But the German Word "Treppenwitz" (stairs joke) is an interesting modification of this term. It can mean the above, but more often it means the understanding of the irony or the joke of an past event. For example you're leaving your apartment and really want to buy some cake. On your way down the stairs someone opens his door and for some strange reason throws a cake in your face. Before you can response, the person closes the door and leaves you behind angry. On your way back to your apartment to clean yourself, you get the irony of the whole situation. A "Treppenwitz".

 

[Fritz]

Wanderlust?

The Wiki page pretty much sums up my impression as a native german speaker:

Placing the two words together, translated: "enjoyment of hiking", although it is commonly described as an enjoyment of strolling, roaming about or wandering.[citation needed]

In modern German, the use of the word Wanderlust to mean "desire to travel" is less common, having been replaced by Fernweh (lit. "farsickness"), coined as an antonym to Heimweh ("homesickness").

 

[Fritz]

That would be "seltsam" to me.

Sul, I don't think you got how cool the word "random" actually is. It's not "strange", that's the joke!

 

[Khalifa Jayy]

Is there a word for "bye" in Spanish, anyway?

We have:

Te veo alrato / Alrato te veo :: I'll see you later.

Hasta luego :: Til next time.

Adios (A Dios te encomiendo) :: It literally means "I put you in God's hands."

Interesting.

 

[The Real Abed]

Spoiler

I love this fun piece

Just knowing there is a word for this, even if it's in German, is comforting.

It is indeed. It is quite a feeling and I'm glad there's a word for it.