I am just having real fun with untranslatable words and trying to understand them. If anyone has some of them in their native language, why not post them here?
[hide]Toska (Russian)
Vladimir Nabokov describes “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese)
The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.
Ilunga (Tshiluba/Southwest Congo)
A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.”
Litost (Czech):
Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.
Tartle (Scottish):
The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.
Jayus (Indonesian):
A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh. Ha! Totally stealing this word! [/hide]
With some words it's extremely fun to see how some languages developed a single word for a certain concept. Everyone knows them, but we have to describe them in long sentences.
But some untranslatable words are just bugging me to no end since I am unable to grasp the full impact of them without a feel for the language.
This reminds me of the days I learned how to properly use "actually". For native speakers this sounds like a joke but "actually" actually has no real equivalent in most languages and took a bit of training to get its connotations.
@Nolus:
There was one person who literally commented "As far as I know, Hungarian is not a real language". I guess it's like latin. No one else speaks it except for, you know, doctors.
I think I have a completely logical explanation for this…
Nolus, when you were a child did you ever perform medical emergency procedures without ever receiving professional training to do so?
Like performing a Tracheotomy with a crayon after your friend choked on a candy on the playground? And then proceeding to revive your kindergarten teacher with cardiopulmonary resuscitation after he/she passed out from seeing the crayon in your friends throat?
You just discovered the reason why: ALL Hunagrians are actually doctors. Diagnosis: Blown mind. You're welcome, doc.