Twenty words and phrases that don't exist in English: no 2

Well, it seems quite a few of you are logophiles like me or at least found some amusing words in my last post. Here are some more while I’m on a roll and then I’ll return to my little series on ‘What makes my heart sing’. Okay? Here goes.

1. mamihlapinatapai: (Yaghan) a look shared between two people suggesting an unspoken desire. It may be used to describe the look of longing shared between two people who are both too shy to act upon their feelings. That one’s for you, Anonymous – is it the one you were looking for?

Too pretty

2. Backpfeifengesicht: (German) a face that is just asking to be slapped or punched. This is a goodie, isn’t it?

3. nunchi: (Korean) the art of listening to someone and gauging their mood. If only more people practised this. And well.

4. tatemae: (Japanese) that which someone pretends to believe. We’ve all done it, especially with our children.

5. honne: (Japanese) that which someone actually believes. A related word, this probably describes our children.

6. sgiomlaireachd: (Scottish Gaelic) being interrupted at meal times. This describes precisely the situation in which you have just sat down to begin a delicious meal, only to be interrupted by an infuriating knock at the door or a phone call.

Remember how we once used such telephones?

7. tingo: (Pascuense) to borrow things from your friend until they have absolutely nothing left. Hmm, not a very ‘friendly’ thing to do, I would have thought!

8. desenrascanco: (Portuguese) the art of coming up with a solution or plan at the last possible minute, without any resources (literally ‘disentangling’ oneself from a tricky situation). Are you skilled at that?

(All found here)

9. Tantenverführer: (German) a young man with suspiciously good manners (literally an ‘aunt seducer’). Brilliant. I love it. You accentuate the first syllable,‘Tant’.

10. Trennungsagentur: (German) someone hired by a woman to tell her boyfriend he has been dumped. How business-like! Or chicken.

11. layogenic: (Filipino) someone good-looking from afar but ugly up close. Not polite but we’ve all thought it, haven’t we?

12. gwarlingo: (Welsh) the sound of a grandfather clock before it strikes. Just magic.

How elegant

13. pisan zapra: (Malay) the time needed to eat a banana. What an elastic measurement of time!

14. mouton enragé : (French) when someone calm loses their temper (literally ‘an enraged sheep’). What a vision!

15. fensterln: (German) climbing through a window to avoid someone’s parents so you can have sex without them knowing. It’s so visual – the word for ‘window’ is ‘Fenster’.

16. momma ko ene: (Cheyenne) having red eyes from crying over your boyfriend marrying someone else. Fortunately, I’ve never needed this one. Maybe you have.

A moment artfully captured

17. tlazlimquiztli: (Aztec) the smell of adulterers. You’re kidding!

18. nosom para oblake: (Serbian) someone conceited (literally ‘he is ripping clouds with his nose’). You can just imagine the nose sticking up so far in the air.

19. traer la lengua de corbata: (Latin American Spanish) to be exhausted (literally, ‘to have your tongue hanging out like a man’s tie’). How evocative!

20. sjostygg: (Norwegian) someone so ugly the tide refuses to come in if they stand on the shore. The hands-down winner for me.

(All found here)

A book which seems to include many of these words and phrases and plenty more is Toujours Tingo: Extraordinary Words to Change the Way We See the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod. That’s one for my Christmas wishlist!

So, which words and phrases here are your favourites? Do any make you giggle or even wince? Do share!

Twenty words and phrases that don't exist in English

I’m thrilled so many of you enjoyed yesterday’s post about learning languages. Writing it really sent my brain into overdrive, thinking about the power and ability of words to convey complex emotions. After a quick consultation with Mr Google and his good friend Mr Wikipedia, I’ve compiled a list of fabulous words and phrases which have no equivalent in English. I found so many, I think I’ll start collecting them and start an occasional series of posts. Here goes – have a good chuckle!

1. l’esprit de escalier: (French) the feeling you get after leaving a conversation when you think of all the things you should have said (literally ‘the spirit of the staircase’). I am plagued by it. I could never be a comedian – I never have a swift riposte handy. Do you think of an appropriate retort hours, if not days, later like I do?

My favourite staircase. Ever.

2. meraki: (Greek) doing something with soul, creativity or love. Ooh, can’t you just relate to this?

3. forelsket: (Norwegian) the euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love. Just beautiful.

4. gheegle: (Filipino) the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute. I love this one – it sounds like ‘giggle’.

5. pochemuchka: (Russian) a person who asks a lot of questions. Er, that might even be me.

Can you ever ask too many questions?

6. pena ajena: (Mexican Spanish) the embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation. What a painful emotion that is.

7. ilunga: (Tshiluba, Congo) a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time but never a third time. Isn’t that just extraordinary? One word to convey all that. Amazing.

8. Schadenfreude: (German) the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain. Admit it, we’ve all felt it.

9. age-otori (Japanese) to look worse after a haircut. And I’m sure many of us have needed this word at some point.

Have you ever felt like this after a haircut?

10. arigata-meiwaku (Japanese) an act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favour, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude. The Japanese take the cake with this one.

11. cualacino: (Italian) the mark left on a table by a cold glass. I’ve always pondered that one.

(All found here)

12. saudade: (Portugese, Galician) the feeling one gets when realising something one once had is lost and can never be had again. I love this – it sounds so wistful and sad.

13. sgriobn: (Gaelic) the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky. I have no idea how you pronounce it but what fun!

Are you a one or two icecube whisky drinker?

(Found here)

14. hygge: (Danish) the complete absence of anything annoying, irritating or emotionally overwhelming, and the presence of, and pleasure from, comforting, gentle and soothing things. I love this one!

15. kyoikumama: (Japanese) the Japanese mother who pushes her children far too hard when it comes to schoolwork (literally ‘education mother’). How horrible.

16. uitwaaien: (Dutch) to take a brief break in the countryside to clear one’s head (literally ‘to walk in the wind’). Hmm, something I should do more often on Planet Baby!

Want to come for a wander with me?

17. zalatwic: (Polish) the use of friends, bribes, personal charm or connections to get something done. Apparently this word was used a lot in the Communist era.

(All found here)

18. taarradhin (Arabic): a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face. Hmm, handy.

19. litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery. How tragic!

(Found here)

And the lucky last:

20. shlimazl: (Yiddish) a chronically unlucky person. I’ve needed this word as I know people like this – I ask them how many mirrors they’ve broken, they’ve had so many years of bad luck.

I haven't done this. Yet.

(Found here)

Do you know of any foreign words or concepts which convey something we can’t in English? Do share – I’ll add them to my list. Let’s not be stuck for words ever again!

What makes my heart sing: words and foreign languages

Well, sweet friends of PB (all 91 of you – welcome to the newbies!), I really enjoyed reading your responses to my French post. It seems I have a lot of fellow Francophiles among you. So, now we’ve got the ball rolling, let’s have a chat about another of my passions – words and foreign languages.

An Anglo upbringing

I grew up in a typical Anglo-centric family in 1970s Australia. We only spoke English at home and Hobart had nowhere near the ethnic diversity it does now. Sure, I went to school with a few children from Italian and Greek backgrounds whose families had emigrated to Australia after WWII. There was the occasional child with Chinese heritage and in the early 1980s, Vietnamese refugee families (or the ‘boat people’ as they were called then) started arriving. But all up, it was a pretty Anglo upbringing. I enjoyed learning to write in cord cursive. That was as exciting as it got!

Isn't this pretty?

Falling in love with words

My Grade 6 teacher gave me the glittering key to unlock the mysteries of foreign languages – a solid grounding in English grammar. Once I started learning French and German in Grade 7, the scales fell from my eyes. I was absolutely, dizzyingly enchanted. Whole new worlds lay there to be discovered, shimmering like mirages in the distance. I fell in love with words. Yes, I’m a logophile! I subscribe to Wordsmith’s ‘word a day’ e-mail which delivers me daily delights of fascinating words and their origins. If I could choose my dream job, it could well be as an etymologist, studying the history of words, their origins and how their form and meaning have changed over time. I bet you didn’t guess that one!

The magical grammar key

Learning French

I learnt how the Norman conquest of England by the French transformed the English language, forever entwining the two. I used my grammar key to unlock the door of French, the most delightful of the Romance languages. 

Ooh, I want a staircase like this!

Some features of French are:

• It uses the Roman alphabet with a number of accents on vowels, circumflex (eg forêt), acute (eg école), grave (eg élève), cedilla (eg garçon) and diaeresis (eg Noël);

• It has two grammatical genders, le and la; and

• Its sentence structure is very similar to English.

Learning German

I used the glittering grammar key again to discover German, one of the Indo-European languages. I marvelled at the way two countries could exist side by side but yet have such different roots and traditions to their languages. It’s quite a complicated language to learn.

One of the pixies' favourite books

Some features of German are:

• It uses the Roman alphabet with three extra vowels, namely ä, ö and ü, together with ß;

• Nouns have three genders, der, die and das. Remembering them all is tricky!;

• It is the only major language that capitalises all nouns; and

• Many words are long compounds. The longest German word is ‘Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz’ (or the ‘Cattle marking and beef labelling supervision duties delegation law’). Try saying that in a hurry!

I studied French and German for my HSC and then, school finished and 18 years old, jetted off on a Qantas plane to my grand adventure, living for a year in Münster, Germany as a Rotary Exchange Student.

A year of speaking Deutsch

What a culture shock that was! Fortunately, my host parents spoke fluent English so they gradually eased me into speaking German. It was mentally very taxing as I was translating all the time. The time that took caused me to appear hesitant in my response, as I always worried about making mistakes. I found I didn’t have enough appropriate adjectives or adverbs at my disposal so my conversation sounded very bland, such as “Wie süß!” (or “How sweet!”) instead of what I really wanted to express such as “Wirklich zauberhaft!” (or “Absolutely enchanting”). That in turn meant that people often thought I wasn’t really interested as I was using such banal language. Ooh, the frustration! Sometimes I would burst out into English as I attempted to get my point across more accurately.

Another hindrance was that my teachers had taught me slang from the 1970s which made my fellow school students laugh, it was so dated, like saying things were ‘groovy’ instead of ‘cool’! Everyone spoke so quickly and I was constantly waving at them, pleading “Langsamer, bitte! (“Slow down, please!”). After several months, I awoke in raptures – I had been dreaming in German!

'Be quiet and speak German'

From that moment on, my confidence and vocabulary soared. By the end of the year, I was speaking quickly, using local slang words intuitively, cracking jokes and even fooling some locals into thinking I was a native speaker! I also mastered some local dialect dating back a couple of centuries. My favourite words were ‘Eichhörnchen’ (‘squirrel’) and ‘Schlittschulaufen’ (‘ice skating’).

Learning Indonesian

Upon returning to Hobart, I studied first year Indonesian at Uni. It was fascinating – it uses the Roman alphabet so no tricky characters to learn like Mandarin, Japanese or Korean, the sentence structure is quite flexible and the verbs are not conjugated. Oh, and no worrying about the ’gender’ of words. The 350 years of Dutch rule have left their imprint on the language, not to mention the intriguing influences of Portuguese, Malay, Mandarin, Sanskrit and Arabic. I loved learning funny phrases like ‘jam karet’, translated as ‘rubber time’ to describe time spent waiting patiently or as expected, rather than wasted. I understand that phrase is used often in Indonesia to explain the endemic delays in bureaucracy or transport! If you want to learn an Asian language, this is a great one to start with.

Learning Spanish

I also spent three years learning another pretty Romance language, Spanish, from a Chilean man, the extremely kind and patient Julio Herrera. I learnt the similarities and differences between Chilean Spanish and standard Spanish. I also discovered so many similarities with French that I often confused the two!

Using my languages on Planet Baby

Since arriving on Planet Baby, my opportunity to use my languages has been limited as I’ve had to learn PB’s language (a story for another day!). However, I still maintain close contact with my German host families and other friends made in that year. When I meet them, it takes a while for my rusty brain to crank into gear but after a day or so, German starts pouring out of my mouth as if I speak it every day. I find my brain’s ability miraculous in the way it remembers things long-buried.

I really want to encourage the pixies to learn languages from an early age so they also have the opportunity to experience the delight I feel. 

From one of my favourite childhood books, Richard Scarry's European Word Book

I think I might do an Adult Ed class to brush up on my French as I miss it! I’m also pondering whether to tutor school students in German and maybe even become a German teacher one day. I think Confucius had it right when he said “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”!

This makes me smile

Have you learnt languages, whether at home in a bilingual family, in classes at school, overseas while living there or for work? Maybe you started learning languages early or came to them later in life. Do you want to learn a language but can't choose which one? Do you want your children to learn languages and if so, which ones would you choose? I’d love to hear your stories and favourite words.

What makes my heart sing: all things French

Well, lovely friends of Planet Baby, looking back, this week’s posts have been a bit heavy. How about something a little lighter – what gives me pleasure while I’m residing here on PB? Yes, somehow in the middle of all the cacophony, action and colour of life here on this planet, I actually sneak the (very) occasional moment to do something for myself. Mind you, until recently I’d almost forgotten about my alter ego, Jane the person. It was as if my identity had become submerged under a pile of dirty washing or under the bubbles in the pixies’ bath. Sound familiar?! Then, since I started blogging (only 11 weeks ago but it feels like much longer), I have started to rediscover myself and remember what makes my heart sing. So, one of my passions is all things French.

Where to start? The deliciousness of the lilt of the language, the vibrant passion, the emotion, the timeless style, the fascinating history and the beautiful contributions to art, philosophy and literature, just for starters! Not to mention the sumptuous food, extraordinary architecture, pretty homewares and just the general je ne sais pas quoi and joie de vivre. Before meeting Mr PB, I learnt French at school and then spent some time travelling around France. One of our greatest dreams is to travel there together to experience the loveliness. I can't wait to return to the gorgeous Musée d'Orsay.

So, how do I celebrate this passion on PB? Well, I mentioned that I recently celebrated my 40^th birthday by holding a French-inspired lunch with dear friends. Here is our blackboard showing the menu du jour.

Yes, it's the pixies' easel!

Here I am with festive feather boa.

I was given these pretty French-inspired presents.

It's so gorgeous, it deserves a post of its own

Here's a pretty letter holder.

I can't wait to use this journal.

Since arriving in Blogland, I’ve found these delightful French-inspired blogs which you might like to peek at. Let them know I sent you!

Favourite French-inspired blogs

♥ The amusing Tish at A femme d’un certain age (you’ll love her alter ego, Cherie)

♥ The dreamy à la parisienne

♥ A foodie’s delight,  Cannelle et vanille

♥ The inspirational Leeann at Fabulously French – do have a peek at her gorgeous online shop. And look at the pretty brocante tote bag I ordered from her which arrived today!

♥ The delightful Dee at French bleu vintage – another online treasure trove awaits you. Sigh again.

♥ Lovely Béa at the scrumptious La tartine gourmande

♥ The classy Si at French by design

♥ The fabulous ex-pat Australian author Vicki Archer at French Essence

♥ Sweet Rachel at *French Farmhouse 425* who creates French-inspired loveliness

♥  The talented Tracey at French Larkspur who has a beautiful eye for photography

♥ The divine prettiness of French Blue with another sweet online store. Sigh.

Favourite French images

I’ve also been collecting pretty French images on We ♥ it. Here are some of my some of my favourites – enjoy! There are so many, I think I’ll have a recurring ‘French prettiness’ series. What do you think?

Ooh, Laduree!

And a delight found on Etsy.

Isn't this whimsical?

I adore this boulangerie

And another Parisian street scene to finish.

I'd love to know if any of you are fellow Francophiles out there! Have you travelled there, lived there or dreamed of travelling there? Maybe you have some lovely memories of time spent in France. Maybe you have French friends or family. Do share - we'd all love to hear!