The word “path” can mean “way of thinking” or “system of living” in English as well. As well as a footpath. Are there languages where the English word “untranslatable” is untranslatable?
While I think the whole “untranslatable” concept is rather vacuous, there are certainly words in any culture which are heavily colored in meaning either by multiple definitions or by specific cultural touch points.
And there is a class of words that seem to used ironically or sarcastically almost as often as they are used sincerely - only one that comes to mind is “pious”. Likewise there are words that evolve from positive connotations to negative ones based on changing social mores…
I too think it’s a lovely word, but it does literally mean “moon-road” or “moon-street” - it isn’t a single morpheme created de novo to describe something that couldn’t be said before. As I said, its a kenning, and you can do them in English too.
Not writing it with a hyphen doesn’t grant it mystical singlewordness to elevate it above an equivalent phrase, or make it somehow stand for a concept that can’t be expressed in other languages.
Actually, since the English phrase has one less syllable, you could argue that English can refer to the phenomenon more concisely.
Maybe isolated words don’t really have meanings in the way we naively think of them. Utterances have meanings.
We just happen to make most utterances out of words, and a given word’s contribution to an utterance is predictable oftenenough that we don’t notice that “word=meaning” is NOT HOW LANGUAGE WORKS AT ALL.
“doch” would indeed be a counter-example to the whole word=meaning hypothesis.
Not really. Natsukashii is used way, way more than you would use any English-language equivalent, and it doesn’t have the weightiness that English seems to. I don’t really speak Japanese, but there are lots of times where I would say something feels natsukashii, but at the same time think it would be pretentious, ponderous, or silly to express that same feeling in English
I think bwv812 nails it. The meaning can be translated but the “feel”, the way it’s used can’t. Go to any place in Japan that would make people feel nostalgic and you’ll hear tons of Japanese people say as an exclamation (ie, louder than normal speech), “NATSUKASHIIIIIIII!!” No one would do that in English. There’s no saying that fits the same place. You can say something that has the same logical meaning but there is no phrase that fits the situation in the same way.
Compare that to say “Good morning, how are you?” There’s pretty much an equivalent phrase in every language that’s used in the same moment in the same situations.
Maybe it’s a semantic issue but I think there’s a distinction between those 2 types of phrases. “Good Morning, How are you” is 100% translatable. Nothing is lost. The other “Natsukashii” (as just one of many examples) you can translate the meaning but some nuance is lost in the translation.
One word I find missing in English is “stuð”. Stuð refers to a group of people in high spirits. A party that has “stuð” is not only good, but most everyone is having a good time and its lively.
Very interesting read, thank you! Never heard about it.
In fact the only one I know who does speak Yiddish is from New Orleans! (I think Yiddish is not a German dialect, it’s a language of its own)
I’d agree that yiddish is a distinct language, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t room for linguistic interplay. Unfortunately, in German, luftmensch acquired some additional connotations, and was removed from dictionaries as part of denazification.
The forward adds some english speakers have taken up the word as their own
In contemporary American English, by contrast, the word has been upgraded in recent years, its positive qualities stressed. A blogger for a possibly one-member organization called The Luftmensch Liberation Front, for example, recently posted this manifesto:
“Do you find yourself incapable of solving the ‘normal’ life problems…? Do you seem to march to your own drummer but find that very few people can follow you or understand what you are really saying unless you play their roles, compromise and conform? No worries here: these are probably the signs of Luftmenschness and not social or psychological pathology…. So be a Luftmensch, friend, be yourself and be proud of it. We are free, we are many.”
No. Nope. Nonononono. Dude. Commuovere is comover in Portuguese (and Spanish). And has the same meaning of feeling very moved by something, moved almost to tears. Get it? Something that makes you comovido is something that moves you. Moving.
It comes, as from most latin-based languages, from a LATIN word: commovere that means “moving with”. Someone that is feeling moved by the actions of others.
When you see the translation in french, déplacé, it keeps this meaning of “moved out of place by a feeling”
A little baby that has a really hard sickness and will need thousands of dollars to have a risky operation makes people feel touched by its situation. It’s… moving. And definitely cerebral commotion (you commozione cerebrale) is a really poor translation work…
Maybe if you feel really touched by something you’ll end up falling and having a concussion?
but, to be fair–I don’t speak American Sign Language, so I don’t know how it is signed–if the ASL for “pizazz” ain’t jazz hands, it damn well oughta be.
