As of writing this, 53 Interesting Words in English That Don't Translate...
"pearl-clutching" English speaker and I never heard this. If pearl-clutching counts, there's a million more words on Urban Dictionary I'm sure
Does Not Translate
21–30 of 133 posts
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#22TIL there's no English word for "to speak among Esperantists in a language besides Esperanto", although I'm not sure one is needed either.
What if you do: s/Esperantists/English-speakers/ and "non-English" AFAIK, the English language is very verbose. If there are so many words, many of which have very similar meaning to others, then many of those words are not needed? Should be removed, even, until everyone forgets them and doesn't miss them at all?
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#23I think that 'Fika' is an interesting one. In Spanish, or at least in Spain, 'to go for a coffee' implies the same things that 'fika' does. Nobody expects to buy coffee to drink at the office, or at home, as to talk and socialize is more important than the coffee itself.
I guess that in English speaking countries it could mean literally to go to buy a cup of coffee and hurry back with the coffee to your desk. Wouldn't 'to for a beer' have the same implications, maybe with more noise, than fika but with beer instead of coffee and cookies?
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#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they are simply giving the closest possible translation. They list “te quiero” as meaning “I love you but not quite. Which is a mistranslation. It literally translates as “I love you”. But at the same time you have “te amo”, which also translates to “I love you” yet they are two different phrases with different meanings.
"te quiero" = "i adore you"
Not really. "I adore you" is literally "te adoro". "Querer" in Spanish just means "to love", it's a synonym to "amar", also "to love". "Querer" is more common language and applied non-romantically all the time, and "amar" is more poetic and veers more towards romantic love, but they both mean the same. BTW, "querer" means "to want", but when it is used to convey love (easy to tell by context), it doesn't ring of objectification in any way. "Quiero a mi familia" is the simplest, clearest, way to say "I love my family".
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#25>Ish - a suffix that softens the exactness of an adjective. Spanish -eico, -izo... >Paragrafryttare. A person who follows written rules to such a degree that they're seen as rigid and inflexible. Tiquismiquis. >Cornuto. To have horns, meaning that you (or a particular person) has been cheated on by their spouse or significant other. Same in Spanish, cornudo. >A pop song released around spring that gets overplayed dur…
>Paragrafryttare. A person who follows written rules to such a degree that they're seen as rigid and inflexible
Stickler seems to work in English.
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#26As of writing this, 53 Interesting Words in English That Don't Translate... "pearl-clutching" English speaker and I never heard this. If pearl-clutching counts, there's a million more words on Urban Dictionary I'm sure
pearl-clutching isn't recently made up... it has a literary history going back at least a century.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22clutching%20her%20pearls%...
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#27I’m always wary of these lists, because if you search for the languages you know you always see that most of them are actually translatable and/or rare expressions that nobody uses.
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#28Is this for words or expressions? Clicking through a few, it seems both. I'm not sure it's fair to say phrases don't translate...they just aren't used word for word. I think single words that have no single word translation in other languages is far more fascinating. Like say, Schadenfreude.
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#29As of writing this, 53 Interesting Words in English That Don't Translate... "pearl-clutching" English speaker and I never heard this. If pearl-clutching counts, there's a million more words on Urban Dictionary I'm sure
That says more about you than the list. I'm guessing you must be pretty young, because "pearl-clutching" is an older term that may be used less frequently these days, though I do still see it fairly often.
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#30Midly related: John Koenig recently released a book called "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"--a continuation of the amazing homonymonous YouTube channel[1]--which contains new words he created to describe emotions. Personally, I strongly recommend it to all those that love languages and would love to explore more about themselves! Being able to put a name to some emotions is very empowering.