Chris Blattman

Search
Close this search box.

Untranslatable words

3. Jayus. Indonesian – “A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh”

6. Kyoikumama. Japanese – “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement”

7. Tartle. Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name.

All 20 are here.

5 Responses

  1. Am I the only one who sees the irony in labeling something sa “untranslatable” at the same time that you put a translation next to it? I think a better categorization would be, “Things that have shorter labels in other languages than they do in English.”

  2. As a Korean, I should contribute with my own country’s “untranslatable” word that I wish English had…
    Noonchi: the instinctual ability to recognize the unspoken situational mood and act accordingly
    Jeong: the closest translation is human love or affection– but this emotion transcends the American concept of “love” or affection,” in that you could have this feeling even for someone you should detest… Maybe it’s what we describe as “humanity.” For instance, what we think of as a story about “jeong” would involve your grandmother packing you homemade lunch and money for traveling expense even though she knows you are leaving her forever or you taking care of the murderer of your child who walks into your place in an incredibly weak form, about to die from hunger and illness (even though you can never forgive him).

  3. Hmm.. “Schadenfreude” has been thoroughly nativeized at this point, so I don’t think it should count. Instead, it should be replaced with “Fachidiot” – a person who’s really smart about some things to exclusion of everything else, such as the brilliant economics physics professor who can’t figure out how to work his email.

    1. Hmm.. “economics” was supposed to struck through there, guess I should have checked that it was accepted HTML first, eh?

Why We Fight - Book Cover
Subscribe to Blog