NPR had an interesting story on intriguing words in other languages. It was from a book entitled In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World.
My personal favorite foreign word is the French 'entarter.' It's a verb that means 'to hit someone in the face with a cream pie'... usually done as an act of social or political protest against someone seen as pompous.
A few cited in the piece:
ilunga (Tshiluba) [ee-Iun-ga] (noun)
This word from the Tshiluba language of the Republic of Congo has topped a list drawn up with the help of one thousand translators as the most untranslatable word in the world. It describes a person who is ready to forgive any transgression a first time and then to tolerate it for a second time, but never for a third time.
[...]
Czech
litost [lee-tosht] (noun)
This is an untranslatable emotion that only a Czech person would suffer from, defined by Milan Kundera as "a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery." Devices for coping with extreme stress, suffering, and change are often special and unique to cultures and born out of the meeting of despair with a keen sense of survival.
No comments:
Post a Comment