NOTES: TERMS THAT DON'T EXIST IN ENGLISH (MOSTLY)

Comments · 15

• FA

  @fariesz6786 · 8 months ago

  so, interestingly, we Germans wouldn&apos;t use „Schadenfreude“ for the rubbernecking situation. i mean for one rubbernecking or gawking is called „gaffen“ (&quot;to gawk,&quot; possibly etymologically related, can also appear as the nominalised verb „Gaffen“ or the agentive noun „Gaffer“ ..yes, credit roles were confusing to me as a kid). but also, unless some overly pretentious twat had their car break down people, i reckon personally, wouldn&apos;t say they experience Schadenfreude while gawking at a car crash or burning building or anything; of course the odd one of them might, but the majority would be driven by morbid curiosity (which, i suppose, would be translated as „morbides Interesse“ but more likely be phrased differently).<br>Schadenfreude is really more something that happens when you<br>a) can be reasonably sure that nothing bad happened, or the damage/injury can be (at least subjectively) deemed irrelevant in the face of how funny the situation was – this is archetypically when kids laugh because someone slipped and fell, and safe for variations on that theme nothing much else – oooor,<br>b) if you feel karmic justice has been served, or at least someone you cannot stand has been dealt a nasty blow.<br>seeing a random person fall and clearly injure themselves badly, or being hit by a car, or someone&apos;s house burning down, does not usually elicit Schadenfreude; or if it does the person will probably be ashamed of themselves or if not will be deemed a bad person.<br><br>aaaaanyway. i have an interesting reverse one of those but with a twist:<br>so German obviously has the word „Angst“ and that is where English gets it word &quot;angst.&quot;<br>however, German does <i>not</i> have a word for what English designates as &quot;angst&quot; like at all! sure there will be enough situations where you <i>can</i> somehow translate it, and probably like 1½ situations out of a million where you can actually translate it using the German word „Angst“ but it is per se as untranslatable as it gets.<br>the German word really just means &quot;fear, phobia&quot; and sometimes &quot;anxiety&quot; and is used with those meanings in psychoanalytical literature going back to at least Sigmund Freud, which is where English got the word originally from.<br>but the meaning and vibe it has now just isn&apos;t interchangeable with &quot;fear&quot; or &quot;anxiety&quot; and thus can&apos;t be translated into German like that, and German never developed a word to render it. so honestly, if it was in a list and i had to translate it, i&apos;d just mark it as untranslatable. and in context, i would usually rephrase the sentence; or, it it&apos;s used like as the genre term, i would file it depending on the intersecting genres as something like „Psychothriller“ or „psychologischer Horror“ (both of which should be self-explanatory in terms of their verbatim translations back to English).

  5

• FR

  @fredyyfredfreddy · 8 months ago

  I wish I could do a Scottish as well as you.

  1

• FR

  @fredhill5379 · 8 months ago

  Wabi-Sabi is another good one. ❤

  1

• FR

  @fredyyfredfreddy · 8 months ago

  You read books in tgagaga and I have never even heard of it.

  1

• HO

  @HotelPapa100 · 8 months ago (edited)

  I knew Schadenfreude would show up. That&apos;s not true. English has &quot;glee&quot;. It&apos;s broader in meaning, but in context means the exact same thing. (&quot;He watched with glee as his fried slipped and fell in the muddy puddle.&quot;)<br>Also Schadenfreude is not limited to psychology; nobody would bat a lid if you used that in conversation. And &quot;Freudenfreude&quot; is not really a thing, somebody made that up. (As any German construction of that kind it is understandable, thogh barely in that case and only by contrasting it to Schadenfreude), but really weird, and most people WOULD bat a lid at that.) We would say &quot;Ich freue mich für dich&quot; (I am glad for you) or something in that vein.<br>Not Greek, but I&apos;m pretty sure &apos;petrichor&apos; is a more common word in English than in Greek. As many scientific terms it has been coined in English (and other languages) FROM Greek, not really translated.

  2

• MY

  @mymo_in_Bb · 8 months ago (edited)

  In Portuguese, sobremesa literally just means &quot;dessert&quot;<br>EDIT: that&apos;s not what lítost means. &quot;regret&quot; or &quot;sorrow&quot; are actually pretty accurate translations. And it&apos;s spelt with an acute accent above the i - lítost, not litost.

  1

• CH

  @ChavvyCommunist · 5 days ago

  You sound like Ash Sarkar

• FR

  @fredyyfredfreddy · 8 months ago

  Dear lord, how many languages do you speak?

  2

• DO

  @DoomyRei · 8 months ago

  Tomb raider