Untraslatable like you
I grew up in a little town in the north of Italy. There was not so much going on there but, lucky me, when I was 11 I was sent one month in Belgium, in a CISV summer camp with kids from 12 different countries.
At that age and with that little experience, I remember the mindblowing discovery that my native culture was just one of the possible options. We played a lot of games about differencies and the most easy way was playing with languages: when the only culture you have met so far is yours, it’s absolutely not obvious that different languages have different grammar structure and, even more surprising, different concepts. Sometimes, when a sentence is lilterally traslated, it makes no sense at all or it changes it.
For example, in german you can ask “kannst du mir Feuer geben?” to get a lighter for your cigarette, but if you translate it literally in italian it could have unpleasant effect, ‘cause you’ll be asking to be set on fire (puoi darmi fuoco?).
Each single concept gets born when it has a word to label it: it’s that simple. At the end, learning different languages not only gives you access to a wider range of concepts, but it shows you much more about your own native language, its limits, and about the features of your own culture.
When I got to know a little bit more german, I started thinking that it makes sense to have so many good philosophers from german speaking countries: this language has loads and loads of specific abstract concepts which are not easily translatable in my native language.
On the internet there are many lists of beautifully untraslatable words. I just collected my favourites:
1-Verschlimmbessern (German) - to make things worse while attempting to improve them
2-Tartle (Scottish) - the act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.
3- Wabi-Sabi (Japanese) - finding beauty in imperfection, and accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay.
4- Gezellig (Dutch) - the warm, comfortable feeling of being with people you love in a cozy place.
5- Utepils (Norwegian) - a beer drunk outdoors
6- Abbiocco (italian) - the feeling of blury brain and lazyness during digestion or after a joint (I’ve recently experienced the feeling of being lost outside of my own language, while trying to express my abbiocco situation)
7- Gökotta (Swedish) - to wake up early and go outside to hear the first birds sing.
Of course the list could be infinite. In case you would like to enrich your vocabolary and -consequentially- get some new concept, there is more that a website dedicated to this matter, I suggest to check better than english.
About this topic, I recently made some illustrations for a liquorice company, playing with old, charming italian words which are not used anymore. Check it out here.
