Better Than English: Untranslatable Words

by pyrotechnick • 14 years ago

7 3 14 years ago

jfaucett• 14 years ago

cool, i'd have to add the following though:

1. Schadenfreude (German) - when you're happy about something bad that happens to someone else.

2. ihr|vosotros|wy (German,Spanish,Polish) - the second person plural, I think english really lacks this, the best solution I know of is ya'll but this has a lot of southern dialect connotations, you guys sort of works but the gender plural of guys makes it seem awkward.

dexen• 14 years ago

Two handy picks for software development:

Verschlimmbesserung (German) - A supposed improvement that makes things worse.

Maya (Sanskrit) - The belief–often unfortunate–that the symbol of a thing is the same as the thing itself.

viraptor• 14 years ago

I like the idea, but the quality of translations of polish words makes me wonder how correct the other ones are. Polish words I found were either incorrectly translated, or only a very obscure variation of their meaning was given.

Better Than English: Untranslatable Words

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