I’ve seen a lot of these lists, but never a list of English words with no foreign equivalent.
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No no no! A centerfold is always in the middle. Page 3 is always right after the first page.
See how much nuance is lost?
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Re coup de foudre, in The Godfather, in the passage where Michael Corleone is in hiding in Sicily and meets his future bride, his reaction is referred to as “the Thunderbolt”, in exactly the same context. Don’t know what Italian/Sicilian term was being translated.
Maybe because that’s not real hard to translate? Even Wikipedia can do it. The only hard part is when they leave out all the verbs and pronouns, but translators can usually puzzle it out.
That’s an interesting though.
I can think of a bunch of English words we use as-is (with a local accent) in Brazilian Portuguese, like impeachment and bullying.
Of course, English is very influential in areas like technology and business, so I’m pretty sure words like software and spam get used verbatim in a lot of languages.
What about English words that are not only used in other languages, but acquire a hilarious new meaning? This comes to mind:
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The feeling one gets watching the end of All Quiet on the Western Front?
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Hey! Spoiler alert!
Just kidding.
(It’s kind out cute that you posted both versions.)
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Every language does have untranslatable “words” to express the feeling…
The most translatable of the sounds is:
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‘Yutta-hey’ – didn’t the Cherokee steal that from the Klingon? Paramount will be along shortly to claim their royalties.
In English: “Witness me!!”
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Sure, it can be translated as a concept, but as a word, there’s really no English equivalent.
I’ve had it. It’s terrible.
пожалуйста.
Did you forget an /s somewhere or do you just not read Japanese?
Meh, no?
“* Dadirri (Australian Aboriginal)”
Come on, there’s over 200 living Australian Aboriginal languages. This is like saying “* S’apprivoiser (European)”.
Try “* Dadirri (Ngan’gikurunggurr).” Or even “* Dadirri (Ngan’gikurunggurr, Daly RIver, Australia)” if you want to be specific.
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I was actually thinking exactly that as I read through the list until I happened on a couple that I “know” in their original/native contextual usage and realized that the translations, while technically correct, (or at least as close as one could hope for), nonetheless failed to convey the fullness of meaning inherent to the original.
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ROFL!
That’s because English is made up almost exclusively of “foreign” words!
(Only half joking.)
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I’m not surprised. It looks pretty, but those ingredients!
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Of course German would have a special word for well behaved children…
