Yeah, that certainly doesnât have an American English equivalent.
There was a Russian word (I think it was Russian) I saw on one of these lists â havenât been able to run it back down â which was the friendly emotion you have for someone with whom you used to be in love.
synonym, âmarriageâ
* Coup de foudre (French): lit, a âlightening boltâ, sudden and powerful love at first sight.
That was me and my Mrs. right from the start. What a gal!
Well at least one of them is nonsense. Koi no Youkan would be âcandy of loveâ (or maybe sweetness.) That might miss the nuance of how the phrase has been used, but itâs certainly not âuntranslatable.â
We see these stories every year, and I suspect theyâre as reliable as the Eskimos having 73 words for snow. In other words, fiction that sounds really right and seems to convey enlightenment.
âThe bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beautyâ â that scene at the beginning of Gladiator where Maximus gazes on a beautiful bird and thinks of home before turning to battle the barbarians.
- Coup de foudre (French): lit, a âlightening boltâ, sudden and powerful love at first sight.
Iâm thinking itâs actually literally a âlightning boltâ but with the French on ne sait jamias, non?
Or the boob scene from American Beauty.
The standard rejoinder is that clearly they have just proved their thesis wrong on account of having just translated them. Perhaps they took a few more words to capture the nuance, but then again many of these âwordsâ are in fact idiomatic expressions, which already are made up of multiple words or disparate parts. For example koi no youkan is three words. Many Chinese words are lifted entirely from a line of poetry (often appearing as either 2, 4, or 8 characters).
Itâs neat to see that other cultures have decided to create pithy idioms for things that many people have already experienced, but âuntranslatableâ is always a stretch.
c.f. Modern critiques of the Sapir-Worf hypothesis.
Awwww.
Itâs in this list:
RazljubĂtï»ż (ŃазлŃбОŃŃ): the feeling a person has for someone they once loved.
How do you get âcandyâ out of âäșæâ, or even âsweetnessâ? Kodanshaâs gives premonition, or hunch. Hadamitzky/Spahn doesnât list it (but itâs a much more portable reference).
ŃпаŃĐžĐ±ĐŸ!
Of course those words and phrases are never truly untranslatable. I mean, how could they? That just sounds better than âphrases that are noticeably pithier than any reasonably accurate translation into English.â And that why there are quotes in the title.
Itâs not really candy. Itâs something untranslatable.
No ăăŁăăăȘă? I am dissapoint.
I also like the observation that American English has no translations for âa page 3 girlâ.
And while explaining the concept of âthe bittersweetness of a brief, fading moment of transcendent beautyâ takes a lot more words to convey than âthose naked girls in every newspaperâ, the former is much more universal to human experience than the latter.
every language should have such a word. itâs so useful
[quote=âVert, post:4, topic:76644, full:trueâ]âfingertip feeling,â the ability to act with tact and sensitivity : tact?[/quote]Not exactly. âFingerspitzengefĂŒhlâ also means how to handle delicate matters and sensitive people just in the right way that each situation may require. Itâs a lot more than âtactâ (which is âTaktâ or âTaktgefĂŒhlâ in German).
[quote]children who are pleasant, earnest, and well-behaved : goody-goodies?[/quote]I donât know why âbravâ made this list to be honest. Itâs basically âwell-behavedâ.
[quote]the âcall of faraway places,â homesickness for the unknown : wanderlust?[/quote]As you can see in the complete list on the website, âWanderlustâ has itâs own entry âWanderlustâ is the want to go out and do see those faraway places. People with âWanderlustâ travel a lot. âFernwehâ is different - itâs the almost painful longing for those places, but not yet having the means (or the will) to actually go there.