TIL there's no English word for "to speak among Esperantists in a language besides Esperanto", although I'm not sure one is needed either.
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Does Not Translate
51–60 of 133 posts
Re: Does Not Translate
#52I’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.
Or you have to untranslate them to figure out what went wrong, like "craunch the marmoset" -
Re: Does Not Translate
#53I’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.
I remember growing up in a 2nd generation home and with many immigrant friends, people would always say "Oh there isn't a word for that in english, its very unique" and then I would tell them the word which was usually not a common word but required some vocabulary knowledge. English is also the largest with over 200k words. Not to say there isn't words like this just that it takes deep vocabulary knowledge in two languages at the same time to know.
Re: Does Not Translate
#54Is 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.
It's only a single word because the gluing together words is a national German pastime (and, more importantly, a feature of the German language). That makes the distinction of expression vs word somewhat meaningless.
Re: Does Not Translate
#55>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
This is the same in German, both in meaning and literal translation („Paragraphenreiter“).
Re: Does Not Translate
#56This is actually a pretty awesome resource! It was pretty interesting to see "-ish" on there. It never occurred to me that there's likely not an exact equivalent to "-ish" in other languages.
In Finnish, there is -hko/-hkö, which is essentially the same thing. For instance:
blue -> bluish => sininen -> sinisehkö
formal -> formalish => muodollinen -> muodollisehko
apparent -> apparent-ish => ilmeinen -> ilmeisehkö
compressable -> compressablish => pakkautuva -> pakkautuvahko
Re: Does Not Translate
#57>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.
"Paragraphenreiter" in German. It turns out many of these "untranslatable" words are shared across entire language families.
(I'm still not sure if a stickler is exactly the same term, because it doesn't necessarily involve rules - but "rules lawyer" works just fine for that context. And for the "but it's two words" crowd, so is Paragrafryttare. Just without a space.)
Re: Does Not Translate
#58Is 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.
"Schadenfreude"'s English translation is "schadenfreude".
Re: Does Not Translate
#59Is 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.
(Perhaps unsuprisingly) danish does have a single word translation: skadefro
And skadefryd in Norwegian.
I'd argue English has a perfectly fine translation given the right context: "glee".
E.g. He watched her fall with glee.
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#60Is 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.
"Schadenfreude"'s English translation is "schadenfreude".
Or "glee". Glee is just much broader, but given the right context it's a fine synonym.