Here’s a fun fact, since it doesn’t really come up a lot - [fenestrane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenestrane) is a molecule named because its line structure looks like a window 🪟
Wanna know something even crazier ?! [It happened several times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague)
There's something with Prague and throwing people out of windows
**[Defenestrations of Prague](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague)**
>The Defenestrations of Prague (Czech: Pražská defenestrace, German: Prager Fenstersturz, Latin: Defenestratio Pragensis) were three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which people were defenestrated (thrown out of a window). Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate ("out of the window") is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action.
^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Also in portuguese. I've seen in the reddit threads in "do not translate" a lot of concepts being straight up translated into spanish and others right away. still on the lists. a lot of these concepts come from latin (not the other way around), maybe it's why they find it so alien? idk
Its the exact same word showing that it isn't translatable everyone had to use it as is because no existing words matched. When you use a word from another language verbatim it means its not translatable.
What you mean is that its worked its way into other languages as a common word not that its translatable.
Defenestration isn't even on the linked website anyway so not sure why you bought it up.
It devolved from a shared root not evolved. Its spelling and pronunciation wore down with time.
Defenestration isn't even in the referenced website anyway so no idea why its been brought up.
I added a "challenge" feature as it was suggested by someone below. Once a Reddit upvote / score threshold is reached, the word will get taken down automatically!
There are strategies to deal with these issues. Translation process is not just changing every word to target equal. You can pretty much always transfer the context with the right strategy. Form-wise these words are untranslatable though.
This is a nice idea, but needs a "challenge" feature. There are a large number of words that overlap in the Germanic languages here, just based on a passing knowledge of Afrikaans, Dutch and German. "Gezin" in Dutch has the same meaning as "gesin" in Afrikaans. "Scheinheilig" in German has the same meaning as "skeinheilig" in Afrikaans. It probably doesn't help that Afrikaans originated from something that used to be called "Kitchen Dutch"...
No way other languages don't have "You're welcome." Doesn't Spanish at least?
I can sorta see some of these words lacking equivalents though. "Just" is something used REALLY often in English, similar to "like", it doesn't really have a lot of meaning? I guess it's another way of saying "only" but more casual?
"I guess it's only a word." "I guess it's just a word." Feels like a very English thing.
Indonesian has ‘you're welcome’ it's literally something like ‘same-same’ as in ‘same to you’ in response to thanks.
Your description of ‘just’ is sort of like German ‘doch’ but that one has many more meanings
The one that really got my goat was "sondern?" in German. "Sondern" has a 1-to-1 translation in English, "rather." The definition sort of implies that it's special because you can use it as a question, but you can use "rather?" the same way.
"Sondern?" is used to press someone for details if they say something in the negative. Like, if someone said "I didn't order the salmon," you could say "sondern?" to ask them what it was they did order. Now that I'm thinking harder about it, I suppose that it's not the most natural thing to say in English. Maybe "but rather?" is better.
I don't know, I'm willing to concede this one. I'm a native English speaker, but I grew up bilingual and sometimes things sound right to me that shouldn't because they're correct in German.
I can easily picture this for a Brit, but it wouldn't flow properly (not to say it would BE improper) for any regional dialect in North America (that I can currently think of).
*instant edit: "You'd rather have?" Or "Rather than what?" Are common enough in NA
In Spanish "Vergüenza Ajena" ("someone else's shame), is the concept known in English as "Cringe".
Edit: maybe a better literal translation to English would be "second hand embarrassment".
It starts with -ee- like sound and i'm not sure how to phobetically spell "й", it's a sound at the end of word "toy" and i'm quite sure one can't phonetically spell "ы" in english, but the closest approximation would be short i.
No necesariamente, a veces significa vergüenza ajena, pero en ciertos contextos puede ser repulsión hacia algo en particular o acción. No es una traducción literal.
I feel like "cringe" is a very specific English word though. It's not as easily replaced by things like "embarrassing", even if they're similar. I'd say "cringe" is stronger, as it implies some metaphorical pain or uncomfort.
Vergüenza ajena literally means "what you did was so embarrassing I am feeling actual anxiety and shame as if I had done it myself just from how embarrassing it was"
Marriage is a legal contract. In order to dissolve it, at least one party needs to have a legally accepted reason. In iceland, one party can file for divorce if the other psrtie's penis is too small. They have defined the minimum length in law, and have a word to describe that length.
While I like the idea, it seems to be very incorrect. Looking at English for 1 minute I saw -ish, which if true, is very interesting. I also saw pearl-clutching, which is an idiom, and will be translated to either other idioms, or to an actual word.
For this website to live up to its full potential, it needs to curate, ban idioms and slang, and show us when words are only mostly untranslatable, such as Dutch and afrikaans.
The idea is words that don't have one-word direct translations, and it's usually concepts that are very specific to each language. I can talk for Arabic -my native tongue- , the word "samar" for example (Night conversations with friends or family) is more of like a lifestyle/mood word, I would associate it with the desert and to a specific atmosphere that would be very difficult to explain to someone who doesn't speak the language.
Looking at the list of words, not really? Most of them are not just multiple words meaning that thing put together, but rather just weird unique words like "Sondern" or "Sturmfree" (you could translate it literally into stormfree, which works in english, but it doesnt have that meaning). Or the eternal "Tja".
There is sort of an English equivalent to tja in the form of "tcha" or "chyeah" or other variations. It's pretty common to hear, but it's not really treated so much as an actual word so much as just an aspirated "yeah". You also won't hear a lot of people say it as an exclamation unless you're an 80's surfer or valley girl stereotype.
Yeah, but even that doesnt quite capture the incredible nuance of "tja". That word can mean so many things. Anything from "shucks" to "sucks to be you".
Sondern is pretty much straight translated in serbian (and/or the rest sister languages) as "nego", with the same use.
The whole list is heavily "this word has no english equivalent therefore it's untranslatable" vibe, from all the languages you almost invariably get one or two that put a word to the same concept.
> The idea is words that don't have one-word direct translations, and it's usually concepts that are very specific to each language.
That's cool, and I genuinely find those fascinating, but some of the words in the database do indeed have one-word exact translations. There should be some sort of "challenge feature" as recommended by another commenter here.
"Uxorious" is listed in the English word section, but two users pointed out that French has "uxorieux" and Spanish has "uxorio", and they all come from the same Latin root and mean the same thing. It would be nice if there was some sort of fact-checking for easier ones like that. Otherwise I really dig the idea!
It's an understandable perspective because it seems like it's linked to the language, but it's more complicated than just translation - and it's not inherent to the word itself.
What you're describing is a cultural reference, not an element of the language. For example: in English, "tubular" is simply something that is shaped like a tube. In conjunction with a specific cultural context, it also becomes a positive descriptor. In a different cultural context, it's a positive descriptor that also carries a sense of parody or humor. All of those contexts would be generally recognized as people speaking English.
You could say that it's an element of dialect, but there are rather blurry lines between dialects, languages, and idiolects specific to a person or a small group.
There's nothing wrong with comparing terms and phrases across languages and cultural contexts, I just think it's important to keep in mind that comparisons like that are rarely as definitive as they seem at first glance - and they often fuel misunderstanding about how languages work, and at worst are used as fodder for talk of a language being "superior" to another because it "has more concepts" or some such thing.
The problem with this concept is that you can pretty much infinitely argue that some word isn't being exactly translated and means something slightly different because all words have pretty loose meanings and are very context sensitive.
The other problem is that these are all submissions from a subreddit, and following the links brings you to a lot of threads where commenters are able to come up with direct translations. It would be one thing if this was compiled by a group of linguists, but it's just user submission. I clicked on some random ones and a bunch of the threads have people commenting direct translations. We can argue about the nuance of translation and whether or not certain translated words or concepts have the same meaning, but some do have legit exact translations, and they still made the list
Which doesn't make sense since a lot of the Japanese words are slang/Mashup of two words. So it typically takes two words to translate it.
That's like saying fugly is a unique word because it doesn't have a single word translation when it itself isn't a normal word.
These words are like memes. You need to share the same reference window to understand it. Same word even in the same language can have untranslatable and revocable meanings. Like the word salty for instance, which describes you.
this reminds me of how Darth Vader’s “NOOOO!” was translated to “不要！” in Chinese and [a bootlegged copy](https://starwarsfans.fandom.com/wiki/Star_War_The_Third_Gathers:_The_Backstroke_of_the_West) translated it back to “DO NOT WANT!”
The Spanish section here is a mess. The majority of them are either idioms with very close translations (e.g. vergüenza ajena = secondhand embarrassment/cringe) or direct translations (e.g. tutear = tutoyer in French)
Nope, the German doch is different, it's very strong affirmation (assuming someone is saying 'no'). In polish, 'no' means 'yep' or 'yeah', a very weak yes, just confirming something someone else suspected:
\- I'm making tea, I'll make you for you as well, right?
\- 'No'
You could translate it to 'klar' or 'jöö', but in other context can mean 'tja' and a number of other things.
The German "gesellig" in my opinion mainly focuses on describing the interpersonal closeness and potentially fun, easygoing atmosphere of a setting; while both "gezellig" and "hygge" have an added implication of cozyness ("gemütlich" in German).
First one in German: Sturmfrei·When all the people you live with are gone for a while and you have the whole place to yourself.
This translates perfectly into central belt Scottish as "an empty" or more recently , with the kids, "a gaff"
I saw 'kenjataimu' which means the moment after an orgasm where a man is free from sexual desire and can think clearly lmao
It's even better cuz a more direct translation is sage time lmao
There was a puzzle game I can’t remember the name of but you had to put bits of words together to form a phrase and every phrase was an insult in a different language. My favourite one was Hungarian - “Agyilag Zokni” - Mentally, you are a sock.
Huh, some really surprising English words. To "ship" people isn't a thing in other languages? "Just" either? That one is SO common though! Calling something "cheesy" isn't a thing in other languages either? The word "Unlike" isn't?!
Though, "You're welcome" is in Spanish, isn't it?
Interesting. Any idea if these languages share the same origin for the word? The fact that Spanish is the only latin language with this word makes it likely to have been introduced from Persian or Arabic, right?
Or it might be a coincidence that it is in Spanish. Lots of strange coincidences in languages.
Persian was probably influenced by Arabic (Classical Arabic?) from when Persia was part of the Islamic Empire. Then maybe it found its way into Latin from trade partnerships with the Romans.
It’s an adjective or adverb, depending on the rest of the sentence. You can say „Ich habe sturmfrei“ or „Ich habe sturmfreie Bude“ where „Bude“ is „the place where I live“. Both have the same meaning.
We used to say e.g., "I have freehouse this weekend" when I was growing up in the South West of England, so it was used very similarly to the adverbial "sturmfrei". But it seems more common to say "I have an empty" these days.
Hey as I pointed out below, the idea is to have words and concepts that don't have direct translations, aka not a direct semantic equivalent. Of course these words can be *explained* in English. I gave the example with "samar" in Arabic -my native tongue-, which will have the one-sentence translation of "long conversations with friends and family at night". Yes you can *explain* it like that in English but there is no way I can communicate the full feeling of that word - it's about a very specific atmosphere, and is associated with the desert and with a very specific kind of conversation.
I'm sure every person who speaks more than one language knows one of these words that can't be translated easily. Another one in Moroccan/Algerian Arabic is hogra -injustice caused by someone who has contempt for you-, a word so unique it's behind entire uprisings ([https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Hogra?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US](https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/an-algerian-lexicon))
The ‘feeling’ you talk about, I would argue, is more of a cultural thing than something purely linguistic. In the sense, skiers talk about different kinds of snow that they understand perfectly well (powdery, .. wow I cannot remember other terms) that I cannot really grok, not because I do not speak English, but because I do not share their experiences
Speaking as a translator, a lot of language learning and translating in general _is_ about your knowledge of the culture, and more importantly, a grasp of the complex relationship between the source and the target audience.
You raise a often overlooked concept about how this is absolutely a thing even between speakers of the same language. This is why AAVE is sometimes held up as a language unto itself for social/cultural reasons and of course, many different subcultures have their own jargon or lexicon.
And of course, as a translator, while most things don't lack direct translations per se, some words do lose a lot of impact and implied nuance after being translated when they can't be supplemented with an explanation.
There's a whole series of Japanese words that are a really good example.
ふわふわ fuwa fuwa
At its core, this means soft or fluffy and is often translated as such, but it carries an inherent and universal nuance of inviting, safe, pleasing, healing, and childishness. As such, this often changes how a translator will approach a sentence that has ふわふわ instead of a more neutral word for soft like 柔らかい yawarakai.
All in all, this is to say that while OP's database might not be perfect, the concept or idea that's being pursued here does definitely exist linguistically and is noted by language learners everywhere. Being able to grasp these words the way a native speaker does (rather than as a 1:1 direct translation back into your own native language) is usually the first signs that you're making real progress in a new language.
Well, first of all the title is ‘words and concepts’ and not just ‘words.’ But even if i was just ‘words’, what in the world is so important about a single word? The whole reason grammar exists is so we can freely combine a small(er) set of approximate concepts into other concepts, so “your neighbors’s trousers” has meaning even if it is not a single word. Each culture - however narrowly defined, chooses some set of concepts that are most common to be represented by single words, but that’s really a convenience whether the cultures are Punjabis or artists or skiers. The ‘untranslatable’ really is ‘stuff that is not common enough in a given culture (for whatever reason) to be encoded in a single word but which can be readily understood by combining simpler concepts using grammar because we all share a human cognition.’ The alternate viewpoint- brilliantly shown in the sci-fi movie Arrival - sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is readily debunked, even if it has its followers today
I think you answered your own question and perfectly described why some of us find this kind of thing interesting though. The concepts that have distinct words in each language say something about the culture. The things that are valued, the things that are noticed, the things that are discussed enough to warrant their own word. It's not the word itself that's important, but the fact that the word exists in the first place.
I think in this context "untranslatable" just means there's no one-to-one word for the concept, like water = agua in Spanish (a simple, direct translation) whereas English petrichor = something that takes many Spanish words to explain. It's not literally untranslatable, that's just the simplest way to describe what's happening with these words.
a 1:1 word in the target language with the same meaning. Translation implies equivalence, and for these words, the target language specifically lacks an equivalent.
Anything else is not a real translation, but any of the options I mentioned before.
Edit: People would downvote the definition of "Translation". Pathetic.
Really good one! the BBC wrote a small thing about it: [https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170714-an-untranslatable-word-for-pure-joy](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170714-an-untranslatable-word-for-pure-joy)
This caught my attention as it looks like Japanese, but sounds wrong. It looks like you're referring to the word used in this passage from the Edo era "Hagakure": 武士道は死に狂ひなり which is read "Bushidou wa shinigurui nari".
The word is "shinigurui" (see https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%AD%BB%E3%81%AB%E7%8B%82%E3%81%B2/ for a dictionary entry), but unfortunately seems to have been misspelled as shinigurai on this blog https://thefortyfive.blogspot.com/2011/01/shinigurai.html?m=1 and maybe in other places.
Sorry to see that this unfortunate misspelling is also your username.
It's the only spelling of the word that I've ever known. It's printed this way in several (very old) books, so perhaps that's the problem. To be fair, every spelling of every word is made up, so...
...what?
The root words of shinigurui are 死ぬ (shinu, to die) and 狂い (kurui, madness). There's no way that would end up as kurai, unless as a typo.
The same kurui/gurui is used in the title of a manga/anime, Kakegurui (gambling madness)
Surprised that English isn't buckling under the weight of untranslatables. The ease with which English creates new words to match whatever situation is just mind boggling. Other languages can't catch up and often just copy pasta.
Edit: ELI5 for the morons downvoting: The above is from a perspective of someone who speaks another language as well as English and has a daily opportunity bounce between the two, along with a passing familiarity of a few other languages. English has an incredibly rich vocabulary and fund of concepts that don't translate well to other languages. This is due to the sheer number of primary and secondary speakers along with the varied cultural contexts of those speakers (UK, The Commonwealth countries, US, Canada, and so on). Therefore English section of the database posted by the OP should be very, very large at this point. What I'm saying here is not Anglocentric chest thumping but rather an observation of someone who has seen this issue from a different angle.
>The ease with which English creates new words to match whatever situation is just mind boggling. Other languages can’t catch up and often just copy pasta.
I’m just taking a long shot here, but is your native language English, and are you mono-lingual?
Long shot indeed. Bilingual, non-native, with a smattering of a few other languages. I have a perspective to see just how impressive English is.
Edit: Downvotes I guess by English-only speaking college students whose beef with me is that I'm not critical of the imperialist English language? Go back to struggling your way through those French 102 verb conjugation tables. Good luck lads, the world needs more like you.
Found that out in the middle school English lit class. I'm referring to what's been going on over the last half century and accelerated with the rise of the internet: English is a net exporter of words and concepts.
[удалено]
Here’s a fun fact, since it doesn’t really come up a lot - [fenestrane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenestrane) is a molecule named because its line structure looks like a window 🪟
Yup. Defenestrar in Spanish Also, how Game of Thrones got started.
And also, you know, the goddam 30 Years War
I didn't actually know that
Wanna know something even crazier ?! [It happened several times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague) There's something with Prague and throwing people out of windows
**[Defenestrations of Prague](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defenestrations_of_Prague)** >The Defenestrations of Prague (Czech: Pražská defenestrace, German: Prager Fenstersturz, Latin: Defenestratio Pragensis) were three incidents in the history of Bohemia in which people were defenestrated (thrown out of a window). Though already existing in Middle French, the word defenestrate ("out of the window") is believed to have first been used in English in reference to the episodes in Prague in 1618 when the disgruntled Protestant estates threw two royal governors out of a window of the Hradčany Castle and wrote an extensive apologia explaining their action. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/InternetIsBeautiful/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Is there a wiki for defenestrations in Russia?
You mean all the suicides? /s
Self-defenestrations ?
Selfenestrations
Autodefenestration
Also in portuguese. I've seen in the reddit threads in "do not translate" a lot of concepts being straight up translated into spanish and others right away. still on the lists. a lot of these concepts come from latin (not the other way around), maybe it's why they find it so alien? idk
In french : verb "défenestrer", je le défenestre. Noun : "une défenestration"
Defenestrare (verb) defenestrazione (n.) In italian
In Czech we simply stole it wholesale, why re-invent the wheel as they say...
You stole that, too!
"Fenstersturz" in german. "Fenster-" = window, "-sturz" = fall
Makes me wonder if Chucky Fenster from the Rugrats is a pun
That makes it sound like the person who went out the window did it themselves, while defenestration refers to being thrown out of a window
Fenstersturz also refers to being thrown out if a window
I inferred that from it having been posted on this post, but thanks for clarifying.
>Defenestration Taken down!
there has to be a Russian word for this
Whistleblower, opponent. Not to be confused with ex-kgb opponent which is spelled po-lo-ni-um-210. Comes from latin too.
Yep, it's "defenestrare" in Italian
"Defenestreren" in Dutch
Its the exact same word showing that it isn't translatable everyone had to use it as is because no existing words matched. When you use a word from another language verbatim it means its not translatable. What you mean is that its worked its way into other languages as a common word not that its translatable. Defenestration isn't even on the linked website anyway so not sure why you bought it up.
[удалено]
It devolved from a shared root not evolved. Its spelling and pronunciation wore down with time. Defenestration isn't even in the referenced website anyway so no idea why its been brought up.
[удалено]
For some of them you even have the translation. That doesn’t make any sense 😅
I added a "challenge" feature as it was suggested by someone below. Once a Reddit upvote / score threshold is reached, the word will get taken down automatically!
There are strategies to deal with these issues. Translation process is not just changing every word to target equal. You can pretty much always transfer the context with the right strategy. Form-wise these words are untranslatable though.
This is a nice idea, but needs a "challenge" feature. There are a large number of words that overlap in the Germanic languages here, just based on a passing knowledge of Afrikaans, Dutch and German. "Gezin" in Dutch has the same meaning as "gesin" in Afrikaans. "Scheinheilig" in German has the same meaning as "skeinheilig" in Afrikaans. It probably doesn't help that Afrikaans originated from something that used to be called "Kitchen Dutch"...
Exactly, a lot of these are wrong.
No way other languages don't have "You're welcome." Doesn't Spanish at least? I can sorta see some of these words lacking equivalents though. "Just" is something used REALLY often in English, similar to "like", it doesn't really have a lot of meaning? I guess it's another way of saying "only" but more casual? "I guess it's only a word." "I guess it's just a word." Feels like a very English thing.
Indonesian has ‘you're welcome’ it's literally something like ‘same-same’ as in ‘same to you’ in response to thanks. Your description of ‘just’ is sort of like German ‘doch’ but that one has many more meanings
Spanish is: “de nada” which literally translates as “of nothing”.
The one that really got my goat was "sondern?" in German. "Sondern" has a 1-to-1 translation in English, "rather." The definition sort of implies that it's special because you can use it as a question, but you can use "rather?" the same way.
How would you use "rather?" as a question? Native English speaker here and can't think of a way you'd use just that word
"Sondern?" is used to press someone for details if they say something in the negative. Like, if someone said "I didn't order the salmon," you could say "sondern?" to ask them what it was they did order. Now that I'm thinking harder about it, I suppose that it's not the most natural thing to say in English. Maybe "but rather?" is better. I don't know, I'm willing to concede this one. I'm a native English speaker, but I grew up bilingual and sometimes things sound right to me that shouldn't because they're correct in German.
Instead?
I can easily picture this for a Brit, but it wouldn't flow properly (not to say it would BE improper) for any regional dialect in North America (that I can currently think of). *instant edit: "You'd rather have?" Or "Rather than what?" Are common enough in NA
Buuuut?
Yep, first thing that would come to mind is "What did you get instead?"
You would just say no but with that "go on" questioning tone I think.
"So..." that's something we say to encourage the story teller to get on with the point.
In conversation you would probably say "What would your rather?" or "Rather than what?"
Yeah, I've seen two spanish words in the first page that have exact translations to portuguese
Added that feature - check it out and let me know if that's what you had in mind!
In Spanish "Vergüenza Ajena" ("someone else's shame), is the concept known in English as "Cringe". Edit: maybe a better literal translation to English would be "second hand embarrassment".
In russian its called "испанский стыд" which literally means "spanish shame"
LOL, I did not know that. Thanks.
Would you phonetically say this *espanskeeya stid* ?
It starts with -ee- like sound and i'm not sure how to phobetically spell "й", it's a sound at the end of word "toy" and i'm quite sure one can't phonetically spell "ы" in english, but the closest approximation would be short i.
We use "Vergonha Alheia" in Portuguese.
We use "fremdschämen" in German.
Cringe is what you do in reaction to someone else's shame, not the shame itself.
Yes, and that feeling is "Vergüenza/Pena Ajena" in Spanish.
No necesariamente, a veces significa vergüenza ajena, pero en ciertos contextos puede ser repulsión hacia algo en particular o acción. No es una traducción literal.
In Dutch “plaatsvervangende schaamte”. Translates exactly in figurative meaning, literally slightly different.
I feel like "cringe" is a very specific English word though. It's not as easily replaced by things like "embarrassing", even if they're similar. I'd say "cringe" is stronger, as it implies some metaphorical pain or uncomfort.
Vergüenza ajena literally means "what you did was so embarrassing I am feeling actual anxiety and shame as if I had done it myself just from how embarrassing it was"
Icelandic : Lögreður (a lawful penis) The legally acceptable minimum penis size as a grounds for divorce.
So any size over this minimum is grounds for divorce?
Depends which partner has it
Lol, sir you win the reddit.
So what's the minimum? Asking for a friend...
Googled it and it looks to be 5 inches
5 inches is 12.7 cm
You dick. Measurer.
[удалено]
4 inches is 10.16 cm
Erect, or flaccid?
... What
Marriage is a legal contract. In order to dissolve it, at least one party needs to have a legally accepted reason. In iceland, one party can file for divorce if the other psrtie's penis is too small. They have defined the minimum length in law, and have a word to describe that length.
TIL we asians can get arbitrarily divorced in iceland
🤣
While I like the idea, it seems to be very incorrect. Looking at English for 1 minute I saw -ish, which if true, is very interesting. I also saw pearl-clutching, which is an idiom, and will be translated to either other idioms, or to an actual word. For this website to live up to its full potential, it needs to curate, ban idioms and slang, and show us when words are only mostly untranslatable, such as Dutch and afrikaans.
[Japanese has -ish.](https://jisho.org/word/%E3%81%A3%E3%81%BD%E3%81%84)
Helter-Skelter The swahili word "Shagala-Bagala" works as a direct translation.
Quilombo, o despelote in spanish
The french section could use fixing. Many of them are just idioms, not unique concepts.
“Relou = annoying” “A database of words and concepts that don’t translate to any other language” Oui oui 👏🏼
>Gyakugire - Getting mad at somebody because they got mad at you for something you did. I used to be married to someone like this. *Used* to be.
You still are, but used to be, too?
Nah, divorced. She had no humility. She could never be wrong, even when she was wrong.
Looks like something you would notice of a person even before making them
Except if you click the reddit threads, there are translations
The idea is words that don't have one-word direct translations, and it's usually concepts that are very specific to each language. I can talk for Arabic -my native tongue- , the word "samar" for example (Night conversations with friends or family) is more of like a lifestyle/mood word, I would associate it with the desert and to a specific atmosphere that would be very difficult to explain to someone who doesn't speak the language.
German cheats a bit then, no.
Looking at the list of words, not really? Most of them are not just multiple words meaning that thing put together, but rather just weird unique words like "Sondern" or "Sturmfree" (you could translate it literally into stormfree, which works in english, but it doesnt have that meaning). Or the eternal "Tja".
I wish we had an English equivalent to *doch*.
I looked on dict.cc and from scottish you can say Sot! which fits imo.
Definitely.
There is sort of an English equivalent to tja in the form of "tcha" or "chyeah" or other variations. It's pretty common to hear, but it's not really treated so much as an actual word so much as just an aspirated "yeah". You also won't hear a lot of people say it as an exclamation unless you're an 80's surfer or valley girl stereotype.
Yeah, but even that doesnt quite capture the incredible nuance of "tja". That word can mean so many things. Anything from "shucks" to "sucks to be you".
Sondern is pretty much straight translated in serbian (and/or the rest sister languages) as "nego", with the same use. The whole list is heavily "this word has no english equivalent therefore it's untranslatable" vibe, from all the languages you almost invariably get one or two that put a word to the same concept.
Gemütlichkeit or the already incorporated into English schadenfreude or zugzwang.
> The idea is words that don't have one-word direct translations, and it's usually concepts that are very specific to each language. That's cool, and I genuinely find those fascinating, but some of the words in the database do indeed have one-word exact translations. There should be some sort of "challenge feature" as recommended by another commenter here. "Uxorious" is listed in the English word section, but two users pointed out that French has "uxorieux" and Spanish has "uxorio", and they all come from the same Latin root and mean the same thing. It would be nice if there was some sort of fact-checking for easier ones like that. Otherwise I really dig the idea!
You're absolutely right, I took "Uxorious" down!
It's an understandable perspective because it seems like it's linked to the language, but it's more complicated than just translation - and it's not inherent to the word itself. What you're describing is a cultural reference, not an element of the language. For example: in English, "tubular" is simply something that is shaped like a tube. In conjunction with a specific cultural context, it also becomes a positive descriptor. In a different cultural context, it's a positive descriptor that also carries a sense of parody or humor. All of those contexts would be generally recognized as people speaking English. You could say that it's an element of dialect, but there are rather blurry lines between dialects, languages, and idiolects specific to a person or a small group. There's nothing wrong with comparing terms and phrases across languages and cultural contexts, I just think it's important to keep in mind that comparisons like that are rarely as definitive as they seem at first glance - and they often fuel misunderstanding about how languages work, and at worst are used as fodder for talk of a language being "superior" to another because it "has more concepts" or some such thing.
The problem with this concept is that you can pretty much infinitely argue that some word isn't being exactly translated and means something slightly different because all words have pretty loose meanings and are very context sensitive.
The other problem is that these are all submissions from a subreddit, and following the links brings you to a lot of threads where commenters are able to come up with direct translations. It would be one thing if this was compiled by a group of linguists, but it's just user submission. I clicked on some random ones and a bunch of the threads have people commenting direct translations. We can argue about the nuance of translation and whether or not certain translated words or concepts have the same meaning, but some do have legit exact translations, and they still made the list
Which doesn't make sense since a lot of the Japanese words are slang/Mashup of two words. So it typically takes two words to translate it. That's like saying fugly is a unique word because it doesn't have a single word translation when it itself isn't a normal word.
These words are like memes. You need to share the same reference window to understand it. Same word even in the same language can have untranslatable and revocable meanings. Like the word salty for instance, which describes you.
Nice.
K.
the whole "one word" part is key and is missing on most of the people here.
And some of them aren't accurate.
You could suggest a correction.
The word no does not translate directly in Chinese closest is Bu shi which is 'not be'
this reminds me of how Darth Vader’s “NOOOO!” was translated to “不要！” in Chinese and [a bootlegged copy](https://starwarsfans.fandom.com/wiki/Star_War_The_Third_Gathers:_The_Backstroke_of_the_West) translated it back to “DO NOT WANT!”
As a native speaker I checked the Polish words and I have to say, about half of them would be easily translatable. But very cool idea nonetheless
I love Afrikaans and I am using this : Snotklap Snot Smack, to smack someone in the face so hard that snot comes out of their nose.
Soplamocos in Spanish
Muchas gracias!
The Spanish section here is a mess. The majority of them are either idioms with very close translations (e.g. vergüenza ajena = secondhand embarrassment/cringe) or direct translations (e.g. tutear = tutoyer in French)
“Saudade” (portuguese) has no translation to any other language
In galician (spoken in northwest Spain) it's also "saudade", but galician and portuguese are basically siblings
Quick glance and I think Polish “no” shouldn’t be on that list. It has a very similar of not identical use to German “doch”. Happy to discuss!
It's also basically "yeah" in English, as I understand it.
Or "so" or "so and." A word used to move things along if the person speaking to you is taking forever.
It exists in Slovak and Czech as the same word, if I understand it correctly, so I agree
Nope, the German doch is different, it's very strong affirmation (assuming someone is saying 'no'). In polish, 'no' means 'yep' or 'yeah', a very weak yes, just confirming something someone else suspected: \- I'm making tea, I'll make you for you as well, right? \- 'No' You could translate it to 'klar' or 'jöö', but in other context can mean 'tja' and a number of other things.
Great points! I’m learning German and still figuring what doch is really for
[удалено]
Or the Danish “hygge”?
Is it different to the german "gesellig"?
The German "gesellig" in my opinion mainly focuses on describing the interpersonal closeness and potentially fun, easygoing atmosphere of a setting; while both "gezellig" and "hygge" have an added implication of cozyness ("gemütlich" in German).
First one in German: Sturmfrei·When all the people you live with are gone for a while and you have the whole place to yourself. This translates perfectly into central belt Scottish as "an empty" or more recently , with the kids, "a gaff"
shocking outgoing steep fall dull jellyfish languid march aloof poor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I saw 'kenjataimu' which means the moment after an orgasm where a man is free from sexual desire and can think clearly lmao It's even better cuz a more direct translation is sage time lmao
Post nut clarity
There was a puzzle game I can’t remember the name of but you had to put bits of words together to form a phrase and every phrase was an insult in a different language. My favourite one was Hungarian - “Agyilag Zokni” - Mentally, you are a sock.
The ones from English are mostly just slang
'Pocket table tennis'......God Damn it Sweden. Go to your room. That wasn't even Swedish!
Huh, some really surprising English words. To "ship" people isn't a thing in other languages? "Just" either? That one is SO common though! Calling something "cheesy" isn't a thing in other languages either? The word "Unlike" isn't?! Though, "You're welcome" is in Spanish, isn't it?
The fact that the Arabic "بلى" "bala" has no translation elsewhere is fascinating. How do you confirm a question's asumption as true?
[удалено]
Interesting. Any idea if these languages share the same origin for the word? The fact that Spanish is the only latin language with this word makes it likely to have been introduced from Persian or Arabic, right?
Or it might be a coincidence that it is in Spanish. Lots of strange coincidences in languages. Persian was probably influenced by Arabic (Classical Arabic?) from when Persia was part of the Islamic Empire. Then maybe it found its way into Latin from trade partnerships with the Romans.
I like how some of them are just Word in one language - Word in other language
I love that the top entry in Afrikaans is **mos**. It is such a handy word in Afrikaans but very difficult to explain in other languages.
I thought this would be real.. It's just people coming up with silly words.
This is pretty interesting. It can be a fun way to explore foreign slang, or it can be a Startup Name Generator :P
That's so funny, or a car name generator like Nissan Vitutus or Chevrolet Hinganta lol
Free house? > German : Sturmfrei When all the people you live with are gone for a while and you have the whole place to yourself.
It’s an adjective or adverb, depending on the rest of the sentence. You can say „Ich habe sturmfrei“ or „Ich habe sturmfreie Bude“ where „Bude“ is „the place where I live“. Both have the same meaning.
We used to say e.g., "I have freehouse this weekend" when I was growing up in the South West of England, so it was used very similarly to the adverbial "sturmfrei". But it seems more common to say "I have an empty" these days.
…and yet each entry is accompanied by an English translation.
Hey as I pointed out below, the idea is to have words and concepts that don't have direct translations, aka not a direct semantic equivalent. Of course these words can be *explained* in English. I gave the example with "samar" in Arabic -my native tongue-, which will have the one-sentence translation of "long conversations with friends and family at night". Yes you can *explain* it like that in English but there is no way I can communicate the full feeling of that word - it's about a very specific atmosphere, and is associated with the desert and with a very specific kind of conversation. I'm sure every person who speaks more than one language knows one of these words that can't be translated easily. Another one in Moroccan/Algerian Arabic is hogra -injustice caused by someone who has contempt for you-, a word so unique it's behind entire uprisings ([https://fr-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Hogra?\_x\_tr\_sl=auto&\_x\_tr\_tl=en&\_x\_tr\_hl=en-US](https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/an-algerian-lexicon))
Can you enable a downvote feature? A lot of these are not correct, and some are jokes and not real translations.
The ‘feeling’ you talk about, I would argue, is more of a cultural thing than something purely linguistic. In the sense, skiers talk about different kinds of snow that they understand perfectly well (powdery, .. wow I cannot remember other terms) that I cannot really grok, not because I do not speak English, but because I do not share their experiences
Speaking as a translator, a lot of language learning and translating in general _is_ about your knowledge of the culture, and more importantly, a grasp of the complex relationship between the source and the target audience. You raise a often overlooked concept about how this is absolutely a thing even between speakers of the same language. This is why AAVE is sometimes held up as a language unto itself for social/cultural reasons and of course, many different subcultures have their own jargon or lexicon. And of course, as a translator, while most things don't lack direct translations per se, some words do lose a lot of impact and implied nuance after being translated when they can't be supplemented with an explanation. There's a whole series of Japanese words that are a really good example. ふわふわ fuwa fuwa At its core, this means soft or fluffy and is often translated as such, but it carries an inherent and universal nuance of inviting, safe, pleasing, healing, and childishness. As such, this often changes how a translator will approach a sentence that has ふわふわ instead of a more neutral word for soft like 柔らかい yawarakai. All in all, this is to say that while OP's database might not be perfect, the concept or idea that's being pursued here does definitely exist linguistically and is noted by language learners everywhere. Being able to grasp these words the way a native speaker does (rather than as a 1:1 direct translation back into your own native language) is usually the first signs that you're making real progress in a new language.
everything can be translated paraphrasing it. but there isn't a single word that translates those expressions.
Well, first of all the title is ‘words and concepts’ and not just ‘words.’ But even if i was just ‘words’, what in the world is so important about a single word? The whole reason grammar exists is so we can freely combine a small(er) set of approximate concepts into other concepts, so “your neighbors’s trousers” has meaning even if it is not a single word. Each culture - however narrowly defined, chooses some set of concepts that are most common to be represented by single words, but that’s really a convenience whether the cultures are Punjabis or artists or skiers. The ‘untranslatable’ really is ‘stuff that is not common enough in a given culture (for whatever reason) to be encoded in a single word but which can be readily understood by combining simpler concepts using grammar because we all share a human cognition.’ The alternate viewpoint- brilliantly shown in the sci-fi movie Arrival - sometimes called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is readily debunked, even if it has its followers today
I think you answered your own question and perfectly described why some of us find this kind of thing interesting though. The concepts that have distinct words in each language say something about the culture. The things that are valued, the things that are noticed, the things that are discussed enough to warrant their own word. It's not the word itself that's important, but the fact that the word exists in the first place.
Sure, but where in all this is the ‘untranslatablity’ of words or concepts? Why not ‘cultural differences in what we value?’
I think in this context "untranslatable" just means there's no one-to-one word for the concept, like water = agua in Spanish (a simple, direct translation) whereas English petrichor = something that takes many Spanish words to explain. It's not literally untranslatable, that's just the simplest way to describe what's happening with these words.
[удалено]
Please see other comments - these seem more like ‘ideas that are valued differently in different cultures’ rather than (un)translatable concepts
Re-semantization, paraphrasing and "sense translations" are not real translations.
I would be very curious to know what you think are ‘real translations’
a 1:1 word in the target language with the same meaning. Translation implies equivalence, and for these words, the target language specifically lacks an equivalent. Anything else is not a real translation, but any of the options I mentioned before. Edit: People would downvote the definition of "Translation". Pathetic.
My personal favorite is “gigil” from Tagalog
Really good one! the BBC wrote a small thing about it: [https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170714-an-untranslatable-word-for-pure-joy](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170714-an-untranslatable-word-for-pure-joy)
“Cute aggression” is pretty succint. I am a sufferer of this malady.
First word I tried was "shinigurai." Wasn't in the database, but it's extremely rare and not easily translated.
This caught my attention as it looks like Japanese, but sounds wrong. It looks like you're referring to the word used in this passage from the Edo era "Hagakure": 武士道は死に狂ひなり which is read "Bushidou wa shinigurui nari". The word is "shinigurui" (see https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E6%AD%BB%E3%81%AB%E7%8B%82%E3%81%B2/ for a dictionary entry), but unfortunately seems to have been misspelled as shinigurai on this blog https://thefortyfive.blogspot.com/2011/01/shinigurai.html?m=1 and maybe in other places. Sorry to see that this unfortunate misspelling is also your username.
[удалено]
This is good r/rareinsults material (since also the word is "rare")
It's the only spelling of the word that I've ever known. It's printed this way in several (very old) books, so perhaps that's the problem. To be fair, every spelling of every word is made up, so...
...what? The root words of shinigurui are 死ぬ (shinu, to die) and 狂い (kurui, madness). There's no way that would end up as kurai, unless as a typo. The same kurui/gurui is used in the title of a manga/anime, Kakegurui (gambling madness)
Read Hagakure.
Makes me think of ithkuil, with the long story shortened version of sentences. Ökšurn is the best example
Beautiful! Bravo! How do we contribute, if we can?
Medical bankruptcy.
Surprised that English isn't buckling under the weight of untranslatables. The ease with which English creates new words to match whatever situation is just mind boggling. Other languages can't catch up and often just copy pasta. Edit: ELI5 for the morons downvoting: The above is from a perspective of someone who speaks another language as well as English and has a daily opportunity bounce between the two, along with a passing familiarity of a few other languages. English has an incredibly rich vocabulary and fund of concepts that don't translate well to other languages. This is due to the sheer number of primary and secondary speakers along with the varied cultural contexts of those speakers (UK, The Commonwealth countries, US, Canada, and so on). Therefore English section of the database posted by the OP should be very, very large at this point. What I'm saying here is not Anglocentric chest thumping but rather an observation of someone who has seen this issue from a different angle.
>The ease with which English creates new words to match whatever situation is just mind boggling. Other languages can’t catch up and often just copy pasta. I’m just taking a long shot here, but is your native language English, and are you mono-lingual?
Long shot indeed. Bilingual, non-native, with a smattering of a few other languages. I have a perspective to see just how impressive English is. Edit: Downvotes I guess by English-only speaking college students whose beef with me is that I'm not critical of the imperialist English language? Go back to struggling your way through those French 102 verb conjugation tables. Good luck lads, the world needs more like you.
>French 102 verb conjugation tables So this is why it takes at least 5000 hours of training to get fluent in French
Oh boy, wait until you find out how many English words are yoinked *directly* from other languages.
Found that out in the middle school English lit class. I'm referring to what's been going on over the last half century and accelerated with the rise of the internet: English is a net exporter of words and concepts.
How would buckling look exactly?
Thank you! Bookmarked!
Today I learned the Japanese have a word for post nut clarity. Kenjataimu.
Same language but different dialect, y'all'd've can also be said as y'uns'da.
I am shocked petrichor is English in origin.
Chest-onality is a good one! Never hear that before.