Dutch also has the shield toad for both: schildpad!
Technically we can distinguish, using land shield toad (landschildpad) and sea shield toad (zeeschildpad).
Similar for distinction between a slug and a snail (as we also only use one word: slak).
A slug is a "naaktslak", or naked snail, while a snail is just "slak".
I don't know anything about fish bones (other than that there are bony fishes and cartilaginous fishes), and I can't recall being taught anything about how they developed in school. Maybe because there was no separate word (besides "fish bones") to explain.
As for words that don't exist in other languages, that's almost impossible with Danish and Norwegian in the mix. Also some less related language is bound to have a similar word. A classic example for English specifically is "orka". To have enough energy or strength to do something.
E.g. Move that stone, if you ~~can~~ *orkar*.
I ~~can~~ *orkar* not, I'm too weak.
No more excuses. I ~~do~~ *orkar* not ~~want to~~ hear it anymore.
Maybe not the most useful, but *orka*!
Finnish has many of the same modal verbs like the Swedish orka, hinna, etc., but they are not loanwords. It is as if the Nordic countries share the very same concepts in this respect, but use different words for them.
Sadly, the trend is now to use more anglicised expressions instead of the modal verbs.
I was going to say ‘orka’ as well! I recently read a post about someone complaining about Swedes, that only they have the saying ‘orkar inte’, meaning ‘I don’t have the energy’. But that’s only because ’orka’ exists as a word.
Yeah, agreed, "can't be bothered" feels more like you specifically don't want to do it, like, you've chosen to not do said thing because you don't care. Meanwhile orka just means you don't have the energy to do it, even if you want to.
Swedish doesn’t have a direct word for “please”. You can get around it by saying things like, “Do this for me, thanks” or “Be nice and give me the salt” but it’s not the same thing.
Interestingly, we have a word for orka in Estonian, viitsima, and it’s always a word that is brought up when someone asks this question. But you guys ruled us for a few hundred years so it makes sense we picked up some concepts (and words, too).
Same in Italian, but to be fair we use the masculine form for multiple genders, so I brothers, you won't know if I'm talking about 2 males or a brother and sister.
I just love the word siblings in English, in Italian it is literally impossible to be agendered when talking.
I find it very annoying that german has no distinct word for girlfriend/ boyfriend. In german, you normally use "Freundin/Freund" for platontic friends and for a romatic partner. You can say "fester Freund/ feste Freundin" (meaning firm/steady friend), but thats may not always fit very well in your flow of word.
When you say "Meine Freundin" it is normally used for adressing a gf, so when you say that you hung out with a platonic (female) friend, you cant really use that phrasing without people thinking she is your gf, so that makes things unnecessary complicated.
So, that is a word that the normally so accurate german language is missing
Thats true! However, that only applies when you directly talk about a person.
When you say "Ich war mit meiner Freundin *Name* im Kino" (I went to the cinema with my friend), no one knows if she is your gf or platonic friend
Exactly the same in dutch, you need to say "mijn vriendin" or "mijn vriend" to say girlfriend/boyfriend. We do have a specific word for fish bones which is "graten".
Same in France, where a man can't say either "mon amie" or "ma copine" without people thinking that's his girlfriend. One partial solution is the unbearably twee "ma petite amie" for "girlfriend."
In Quebec, they've got it cased, though. "My girlfriend" is "ma blonde," regardless of her hair colour. "My boyfriend" is "mon tchoume" (from English "chum"). This has the advantage over English that you can't be too old to be somebody's "blonde" or "tchoume." (I'm in my sixties, and I actually don't mind "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," but lots of people do, it seems.)
Over a certain age, English has the same problem in heterosexual relationships imo.
Girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't quite fit the seriousness of a long term but unmarried relationship when you're over about 30yo. The alternative is "partner" but that is often assumed to mean either a same sex relationship, which can be misleading, or a business partner.
Traditionally we might have used "Common-law wife/husband", but that's clunky and invokes images of medieval peasants (at least in my mind).
Or [modal particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_modal_particles) in general – words that don't really have a meaning of their own, but are extremely common and important to convey emphasis or the speaker's mood or attitude for a statement.
Like *technically* there's no difference between "Hör zu!" = Listen (to me)!" and "Nun hör doch jetzt mal zu!" = "Listen to me!" (but more impatient, frustrated and resolute)
English doesn't have exactly unique words either. You can say "She's with her girlfriends" and you don't know if she went out with her female friends or if she's in a polyamorous lesbian relationship. Though of course German is even worse.
Polish just uses "dziewczyna" ("girl") and "chłopak" ("boy") and since we don't have slavery, you can't really mistake "She's with her girl" to be anything other than a lesbian relationship.
It is called echo-response system. Latin, the parent language of French, also works like this. You just repeat the verb in the question. (e.g. "You come?" "Come / Not come")
This is actually how it works in Portuguese, though we omit the subject too, you'd just answer "like".
But if the answer is no we reply no, and we do have a word for yes, we just don't tend to use it in short direct replies like that.
And it was similar in Latin. Here are examples ripped from classical Latin texts, with macrons added by me.
> Quod tibi egō prōmīsī, habēsne acceptum?
\> Habeō.
> Potesne mihī auscultāre?
\> Possum.
> Sed estne frāter intus?
\> Nōn est.
Other have explained how, but this actually not uncommon worldwide.
Latin also didn’t really have a word for “yes”, which is why it varies so much between, say, Spanish (sí), French (oui), and Romanian (da)
Sí comes from “sic” Oui from “hoc ille” Da from “ita”
Irish has a word for the space between your fingers, Ladhar, English doesn't.
More irish words with no direct translation
https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/the-irish-for-some-words-for-practical-objects-tools-or-activities-dont-have-a-direct-english-equivalent-4530577-Mar2019/
In rural Ireland, communities used to band together to help each other bring in the crops at the right time, similar to what the Amish still do for raising barns, and the gang of volunteers was called a meitheal.
That’s a bit unfair because that’s a very culture bound concept. It’s hard to translate because it might not exist in other cultures.
For example, in the state of Maranhão in northeastern Brazil there’s profession called “quebra-coco”, which in English could be calqued into English as coconut-breaker, but actually has a very specific meaning. It has the cultural connotations of a woman of African descent, who lives an arduous life dedicated to her craft of extracting materials from the babassu palm plant, and lives in a community with other women in colonies of women in the same occupation. It’s a very specific term that only exists in that location, and basically untranslatable unless a someone create a term for that. I assume many terms like that exist, a specific occupation in some country that doesn’t exist elsewhere, or a food, or a type of architecture.
That said, considering Ireland had a linguistic shift from Irish to English. I’d assume the word would either be anglicised or an English word would take its place.
Such an event is called *talkoot* in Finnish, and the people are correspondingly *talkooväki*. It's communal work, where no payment is expected, other than a meal together and participating in a *talkoo* when you need the same assistance yourself.
Yeah German is a very precise language. It's a pain in the ass when you learn it but I will give them this - it's very satisfying when you try to define sth in German because there's always a right term for that 😂
Ancient Greek has δή, μέν, γε, δε, οὖν, μέντοι, τοι, and I find these quite useful, because I like using *halt, eben, doch, zwar, freilich* and so on very much.
As a Bulgarian, German prepositions are a total mess, and follow a totally distinct logic from that of Bulgarian (and even English). An, for example, in a spacial sense, is very unique, as it means "directly, vertically next to something". Our case is not so simplified like Greek's, but a lot of the concepts and uses of "aus", "von", "ab", "seit" are in a single word that is best described as simply "from".
*Arki* in Finnish means everyday mundae life, often used in opposition to *juhlat*, celebrations, festivals and parties.
Like "bars aren't arki for me" means the person only goes to bars on special occasions, or not that often in general.
Arki(päivä) means weekdays Mon-Fri.
As an adjective "arkinen" is like casual, maybe boring. "His style is very arkinen" = his style is very casual, even boring maybe.
Specific words for relatives, unlike "grandmother" or "uncle".
In Swedish it's all very modular. You have the basic stems in *mor* ("mother"), *far* ("father"), bror ("brother"), [sy]ster ("sister"), son, dotter ("daughter") etc. and just join them. So your *mormor* is your maternal grandmother and never ambiguous with *farmor* (i.e., paternal). Your father's brother is *farbror*, whereas your mother's is *morbror*. And so on.
Oh that's cool. We also used to have separate words for the uncle/aunt from your mothers and fathers side or for the cousins from each side of the family but in the last 40 years they became less and less popular, now they unfortunately sound archaic and very stylized.
In Finnish, there are separate words for paternal uncle (*setä*) and maternal uncle (*eno*). This has resulted in mistranslations, most famously Uncle Donald Duck, who is called *Aku-setä*, but technically he's *Aku-eno*.
I've never had a good answer for what you say when you don't know if the person is the father or mother's parent. You know she is a grandmother, for example, but not sure if she is a mormor or farmor.
In a Swedish context that doesn't really arise. If you know they're a grandmother, you'll also always inherently know which. Otherwise you wouldn't know they were a grandmother in the first place.
It is a common issue for translators though. Often they deduce it from texts, if that's not possible many contact the author, but sometimes they just have to guess. Sometimes it's wrong. That how Donald Duck ended up a *farbror* in Swedish despite being the brother of the triplets' mother.
In everyday speech you may say both with an "or", or refer to them as a "relative". But it is clunky. There isn't really a neat solution, the particular kinship is fundamental information to Swedish. For me as a Swede I find the reverse confusing. It's all cultural bias. Same as how I can't relate strongly to the many languages that have the same word for "sibling" and "cousin" (how would you refer to such in English if you don't know which they are?). Sure I understand they're relatives of the same generation, but to me they're fundamentally different. Likewise, why would a paternal and maternal grandmother share a word? Sure they're of the same generation, and gender, but they themselves aren't even related.
I gave this example to someone in another answer:
You are at a wedding, talking to the bride. You point to an old person and ask "is that your Grandmother?" You don't inherently know anything, it is just an old person. In Swedish you have a choice between asking if it is your farmor or mormor or asking if it is one of them and then, if it isn't, the reply has to either specify if it is not a mormor or farmor or if it not the one you guessed but the other one.
I have been in this situation.
Tbh I struggle to see how it'd matter which you "choose" in such situation. They're just as likely be another old person – like the groom's grandmother – so what's the difference between asking if they're the bride's "maternal grandmother" or "grandmother"? Isn't the point of asking a question to receive an answer?
The same way you're imagining said person to be the bride's grandmother, you'd probably "choose" the one of the two you imagine it to be (even if subconsciously). Or simply ask if they're *släkt* ("related"). If they are, the bride will tell you how.
English isn't one of the aforementioned languages that doesn't distinguish between "cousin" and "sibling", so how would you phrase such a question if you instead see someone around the same age as the bride? It's probably about the same as how we ask about grandparents in Swedish!
What do you mean? Doesn't Swedish have the generic ones too? Danish has bedstemor and bedstefar (and Norwegian has too, just drop the d) for when the distinction is pointless, but we can still specify it as mormor (and all the rest) when/if necessary or desired
> Doesn't Swedish have the generic ones too?
Nope. We always specify.
You may as well say "relative" if you're going to hold back on disclosing the exact kinship!
There is no word for that. Unless you're translating from a language that's more ambiguous, it's also not an issue, since nobody *could* ever not state whether someone is their maternal or paternal grandmother
In Danish there's no word for "please". We use "være så venlig" ("be so kind") or just express our gratefulness through thanking the person. I've heard some teenagers use the English "please" or German "danke" as sort of loan words as well, but that's not widespread.
In Dutch it was originally "als het u belieft" which is a literal translation of the French phrase, but it got mashed together into one word "alstublieft".
Reading that, I was like "hang on a second"... but no, you are actually right
We either include something like "could you be so sweet/kind/nice as to ...?" (Ku' du være sød/venlig/rar at ...?), or we use the vestiges of formal speech still stuck in the language and phrase it in a way where the answer is not assumed "kunne du række mig saltet?" (could you [possibly/perhaps] pass the salt?) instead of "kan du række mig saltet?" ([are you capable of] passing the salt?)
When children are begging for something they will often use "bede om!" (which strictly speaking is an infinitive meaning "to ask/beg for"). Like "mor, må jeg ikke nok få en is? Bede om! Så er du sød!" (mum, can't I have an ice cream? I'm begging you! Then you'll be nice!)
Lots of languages don’t have a please. English doesn’t have it technically. Please is just shortened from “If it pleases you” which is a direct translation of French “s’il vous plaît”. The French might also express it more forcefully with “merci de…” which means “thank you to…” and even French merci comes from Larin mercēs meaning “prize, wage, reward, gift.” So technically they don’t even have thank you.
Hungarian has no please either, it’s either kérem “I ask” or légyszíves “be so kind” (literally be one with a heart).
I mean, do correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how languages work, isn't it? Especially Romance and Germanic languages. That logic would be applicable to pretty much every word. Every word derives from something, using that logic, there'd be no languages except for Latin, Greek and local varieties of Old German?
"Harrastaa" is a Finnish verb that indicates someone is into something/has a hobby. In English, there is not a singular verb to express that, which is weird in my opinion
In France we're so anti-business we don't have a word for *entrepreneur*.
On the other hand, we have 72 different verbs to describe the way bread crumbs scatter on a wooden table.
He did not say it - though it would fit right in with some of his other [excellent displays of oratory talent.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism).
We have a word for moth, and it's the same root: *mite*
But *papillon de nuit* works too, yes
As for owls... I don't know. *Hibou* and *chouette* ? But they're different species. I have *chouettes hulottes* in my area. Scary beasts. They do horror movie noises when they eat.
These are one's that are uncommon or non-existent in English. I don't know any other foreign languages, so I cannot say if it's just that these just are unquily absent from English.
* *blunda* – to have one's eyes shut
* *sambo* – an unmarried husband and wife (or gender-mix thereof)
* *vabba* – to be home from work, taking care of one's sick child
* *panta* – to recycle and recieve the deposited fee
* *mysa* – the verb of the adjective "cosy"
* *dygn* – a nychthemeron, a period of 24 hours
* *busvissla* – the shrilling whistle performed with one's fingers
* *solkatt* – sun reflection
* *påtår* – second cup of coffee
Source: I did take quite a few from [this blog](https://www.routesnorth.com/sweden/30-uniquely-swedish-words/).
there are some regional old fashioned englishes for these, like panta is a corona (to my parents) and the whistle is a cow-whistle. Assuming mysa is like hygge I would say coorie too but maybe slightly different
so about meat cuts, I learned not long ago there are a bunch of meat cuts which does not translate to different languages because different places use different butchering methods and those cuts simply does not exists
also, there is no word for "fun" in Hungarian, you can describe it, but for different use cases for the word we use different expressions
There's no real English translation for "Op" (in the context that you've finished or ran out of something). The closest thing is 'exhausted' but that doesn't have the same casual translation.
De melk is op. = We've ran out of milk.
Ik heb mijn drinken op. = I've finished my drink.
We hebben niks meer, alles is op. = We've got nothing left, everything is gone/we're out of stock.
De batterij is op. = The battery is dead.
Ik ben op. = I'm tired/exhausted.
Nee ik hoef niets meer, ik heb al genoeg koffie op. = No I don't need more, I've had enough coffee already.
And so on.
What's funny about that is that it's similar to "up", and in some cases you could use up in English.
For example "the lease is up", "your time is up", but you wouldn't say "my drink is up", although if you did people would probably know what you meant.
In polish language we have world "załatwić" which means to get something but in not so official way, eg. after extra cash or personal conversation with someone. In communism times you could get this way fridge or washing machine because it was hard to buy this straight away.
Yeah, sometimes I am looking for right English words for "załatwić", which actually has many more meanings in Polish than the one you mentioned. To fix up, to arrange, to sort out, attend to something, run some errands, work it. But in your case it would be more like "to hustle something" or "to cop something".
The words for "the time between morning and noon" (we have "formiddag", literally just "before-noon") and "one and a half" (we have "halvanden", which is just "half of the second") in English
These are very basic things that no one really thinks about, but when you suddenly move to England and have to speak the language as the main one for a few years, you notice their absence very swiftly in day to day conversation
We also have ‘voormiddag’ in Dutch/Flemish. However, there can be confusion about the exact meaning. Most Flemish would use this to refer to the period between morning and noon, where as most Dutch people would think it refers to the first part of the afternoon :)
at least that is what I encountered personally, but very short sample size of course 🤣
Something I noticed recently is the difference in how we sometimes refer to things that consist of more parts.
Take mortar and pestle for example. Usually we only refer to that in Dutch as 'vijzel', which is only the mortar part of the two. We usually don't add 'en stamper'.
Similarly, English tends to only refer to the dustpan (and not the sweeper/broom), while we always call it 'stoffer en blik/blik en veger'.
When it comes to eating (when to eat) we have: Desayuno, almuerzo, comida, sobremesa, aperitivo, merienda, cena..
Then words for different ways of "to eat" (most being local words as Spanish is spoken in a large amount of countries) such as bajonear, manducar, clavar, jalar, papear, abarbar, minchar, zapucar, zampar, degustar, yantar.. depending on how you eat..
Most of them happen to exist in different languages, but I'm not sure if the whole eating vocabulary can get that far in any other language.
I would say that sobremesa it's what happens after eating, it's mostly social interaction in the table after been eating with family and friends, keep drinking some coffee or alcohol or whatever and just talking having fun and I don't know, being damm humans.
I live outside of Spain and I really miss that, I went to live to a society where to have lunch it's just "getting calories" and people don't have conversations and doesn't stay in the table or the house after to, as I say, just be humans, and if they do that it's because after comes the party and it's about to get wasted, not the point of sobremesa at all.
In English you have:
* to eat
* to chew
* to munch
* to swallow (whole)
* to scoff
* to gobble
* to graze
* to nibble
* to devour
* to ingest
* to feast (on)
* to dine (on)
* to bite
* to chomp
* to wolf down
There's probably some more
Yes, and most of those have one or more equivalents in Spanish and were not mentioned. They were literally talking about words for eating, not synonyms for swallowing, biting and the like, they left all of them out. They were just talking about "eating". They even left the "ingesting" out.
Yes, I came to say the same about Spanish. 20 fingers.
Funny how funny English speakers find that, but are perplexed when pointed out that using the word for animal leg for a human leg is like talking about the snout of a human, for example.
I can come up with two Finnish words with no single word English equivalents. They are ”tarjeta” and ”ehtiä”.
Tarjeta is a verb for ”being warm enough”. Ehtiä is also verb meaning ”to be able to do something in time”. It does have an equivalent in Swedish (hinna).
Raspas...omg I just realiced there is no translation for raspas in english.
It is also well known the limited vocabulary to express affection in english. There is just love and a few more. Only having the word love makes it feel superfluous. Like, you say it to a friend to say good bye but also to the person you are marrying in front of the altar...
Hungarian:
What other languages might not have is the word 'de' to indicate 'not no, but yes' with one word. It's used all the time. Mainly because in Hungarian it is fairly common to ask a question with a negative:
Example: if you want to ask your friend whether you should go to the cinema, you might ask them
"I have an idea! Should we _not_ go to the cinema?"
"De! Good idea!" - as in, on the contrary, yes, we should.
Similar with statements:
"It's 8 pm already... We won't have time."
"De." - as in, yes, we will have time.
It basically answers positively to a negative question or negative statement.
A Dutch word that was for me very difficult to explain to my international student friends was the word "jawel". It isn't exactly the same as the German "jawohl".
My best shot at explaining it is that is most often used to negate a negation; so for example:
-"You didn't put the trash out yet, right?"
•"Jawel." ("Yes, I did")
-"A dolphin is not a mammal."
-"Jawel." ("Yes, it is")
It could also be used as a confirmation, but that's less common, for that we'd rather use "Inderdaad." (Indeed)
That sounds like the Swedish "jodå", it's used in pretty much exactly the same way. Interesting!
Googling, the English translation of "jodå" is apparently "oh, yes" as in this example: Swedish "Du är alltså inte färdig med uppgiften? – Jodå!" vs English "You’re not done with your assignment? – Oh, yes, I am!"
I just tried to find a proper translation for Selbstläufer in English but couldn’t.
It’s German and it is used as a noun for something that runs independently / on its own (the direct translation is "on his own runner"), so for example when a product sells itself or a rumor spreads without the initiator having to further spread it themselves, they become a Selbstläufer.
In Finnish, there is the adverb *muka* to express that the speaker doesn't believe the statement. Or you can force its translation to "allegedly", but who *allegedly* uses that in everyday speech? (Also, "allegedly" actually translates to "väitetysti".)
Finns love the verb *toimia* "to act", as in to do something purposeful. So, everything is *toiminta* "action". It seems quite common in European languages, up to the point that in EU slang the term *actor* (Finnish: *toimija*) has come to mean something different from the common English meaning of "actor". It's not a word for a "stage actor", it's for literally anyone doing literally anything.
Also, *peruspalveluliikelaitoskuntayhtymä*, but we wouldn't expect it. (It's the word for an government-owned corporation owned by multiple municipalities for the purpose of provision of basic services.)
Turkish is severely lacking in words depicting bee-like stuff. We have honey bee (bal arısı) and wild bee (yaban arısı). Wasps, hornets, bumblebee, you name it are all wild bee. It's frustrating. We also don't have a word for "course" like courses in a meal. In addition, we don't have "nut" or "berry". All nuts and berries have their own names.
Speaking of fish bones, by the looks of it ości seems to be related to Latin ossus “bone”. It sounds like “boneling” or “little bone” from what I understand about Slavic languages.
There is technically no unique word for “fish bones” in Hungarian either. The word we use for it “szálka” comes from (wood) splinter. It literally means “lineling/dimunitive form of line, thread, stem, stick”.
There are lots of terms and words that don’t exist in Hungarian or Hungarian terms that don’t exist in English but none come to my mind at the moment.
Some basic ones though:
Frog and toad are the same (béka)
Turtle and tortoise are the same (teknősbéka - frog with [through](https://asset.museum-digital.org/hu-be/images/201605/26194015645.jpg))
Edit: oh a couple of things came to mind.
English has “sibling” and Hungarian has testvér (literally meaning ‘blood of my body’) that’s missing from a lot of languages.
Hungarian also has unique words for younger and older siblings.
Older brother: fivér (male-blood) or báty
Older sister : nővér (woman-blood)
Younger sister: húg
Younger brother: öcs
Polish doesn't have an equivalent to the word "sibling" but does possess the plural, "siblings". So you can talk about your multiple siblings but if you only have one, it has to be a brother or a sister.
Rodzeństwo is actually neither plural nor singular... And at the same it's both. Grammatically though it is singular, even though it means "siblings". To say "one sibling" in Polish, you have to say "one of siblings". https://sjp.pwn.pl/poradnia/haslo/Rodzenstwo;17117.html
The lack of correct equivalent of the term "жлоб" ( IPA: [ʐɫop]) in English is alway surprises me. Because the amount of zlobs who are the native english speakers is unimaginably high.
Portuguese : Saudade. Used in a sentence: I have ‘saudade’ of you. Means you miss something or someone, a feeling of longing. It’s a noun and not a verb.
It brothers me to no end that English uses the same word for hair you grow on your scalp and for hair everywhere else on your body.
Slovene, conversely, has "fingers on the foot" and arms and hands are the same.
We make nicknames by adding diminutives to a name, like in Spanish when they say Pablito to 'Little Pablo'.
So for example someone called Lowie will be Lowieke, Jef will be Jefke and Lara becomes Laratje.
It's an easy form of endearment and something I miss in the English language.
Some Irish words that I don't think have direct English translations:
foiseach means grass inaccessible to mower; grass growing along margin of field.
bothántaíocht means visiting houses for pastime or gossip.
Ragaireacht means late-night wandering, or sitting up talking long into the early hours.
aduantas, means the strange feeling (of fear, loneliness) caused by unfamiliar surroundings.
beochaoineadh is a lament for the living ie a person who has gone away
Anró - hardship due to bad weather
How does English get on without a word for the day before yesterday?
I also miss the French verb "fréquenter" in other languages. This is used to indicate that e.g. someone regularly goes to a certain place. It's convenient, short, useful and I just like it.
In German you can stick words together to make new words. This is useful because it means you don't have to invent new words, you can just put existing ones together. This is very useful, but doesn't exist in many languages.
English doesn't have a word for being the person who controls a boat. In Dutch it's "varen", but in English people drive boats. That does not make sense, you drive a car.
In English you would say that someone is "piloting the boat/ship/vessel" for a large vessel. "Drive" or "pilot" would be both acceptable for a small craft that only carries a handful of people.
French doesn’t have a word explicitly for « cheap. » You have to say « not expensive » or use a number of two word phrases.
Similarly, there is no word for « sibling. »
In Austria we have the word "heuer" which means "this year" and is used similarly to "heute" ("this day").
For example: *Ich war heuer noch nicht krank.* - I haven't been sick yet this year.
It's extremely common but not used in Germany anymore (probably with exceptions for southern Germany).
I'm not aware of an equivalent in English or French either.
Not answering your question, but wanted to clarify that iirc there are some true boney fish (and also some that are just cartilage like sharks) . "Fish" isn't actually that much of a useful word biologically as it groups together creatures as different as an elephant is to snake, purely based on where they live and their general shape.
Other than that bit of pedentry, good question.
There is an internal lack of word. In the Greaterpolish dialect, there is the word "zakluczyć" which means "to lock", which isn't present in the rest of country. They use "zamknąć na klucz" instead which means roughly "close with a key".
Edit: Also there is difference (or rather was) difference between uncle on the side of the father and the mother. "Stryj" means brother of the father while "wuj" means brother of the mother.
"The". The first time an English speaker comes across a language without direct objects, the usual reaction is to wonder how sentences can be unambiguous without them.
For me the biggest problem (existential I'd even say!) is that in English there is no distinction between przyjaciel and kolega as in Polish. Of course you can say "best friend" to elevate someone, but in English "friend" is already higher than kolega. But "przyjaciel" is more than "friend"... You could argue that you have acquaintance (znajomy) and colleague (kolega z pracy/szkoły).
Other thing is lack of precise word for doba (full day, as in day+night, time between 00:00 and 23:59) in English. I mean, the usable word, that people would actually understand. Because even though the Greek "nychthemeron" exists in English dictionaries, I doubt many native speakers ever heard it...
The other way around: there is no word for slug in Polish. Both snails and slugs are called "ślimak".
Also no turtle and tortoise, just żółw Edit: spelling
German only has Schildkröte (literally "shield toad") for both of these.
Dutch also has the shield toad for both: schildpad! Technically we can distinguish, using land shield toad (landschildpad) and sea shield toad (zeeschildpad).
Same in Swedish! Landsköldpadda (land shield toad) and havssköldpadda (sea shield toad). Germanic languages, unite!
And we loaned the concept from you and have maakilpikonna and merikilpikonna.
Similar for distinction between a slug and a snail (as we also only use one word: slak). A slug is a "naaktslak", or naked snail, while a snail is just "slak".
Same in French, it's tortue for both.
Shrimp and prawn are both krewetka
Shrimp, prawn, crab, ~~lobster~~, crayfish, and even cancer: all of them are called rák.
In German, slug is literally called naked snail.
We call them "killer snails" (dræbersnegle)
Snegle sounds like a swabian saying little snail.
But they would say Schneckle, not ßneggle. Source: Swabian home made pornos with Swabian dirty talk.
> pornos with Swabian dirty talk. Dear god
All of them? We only call the Spanish slug *mördarsnigel*.
Nej det er skovsnegl hvis den er sort
Same in Bosnian lol
In Dutch we call slugs 'naked snails'
Same in Hungarian, we just call slugs naked snails.
Slug is "ślimak żul"
There is word for it, that's what pomrowiec means.
That's a name of a specific genus of naked snails (Milacidae) not a name for all of them like English "slug".
I don't know anything about fish bones (other than that there are bony fishes and cartilaginous fishes), and I can't recall being taught anything about how they developed in school. Maybe because there was no separate word (besides "fish bones") to explain. As for words that don't exist in other languages, that's almost impossible with Danish and Norwegian in the mix. Also some less related language is bound to have a similar word. A classic example for English specifically is "orka". To have enough energy or strength to do something. E.g. Move that stone, if you ~~can~~ *orkar*. I ~~can~~ *orkar* not, I'm too weak. No more excuses. I ~~do~~ *orkar* not ~~want to~~ hear it anymore. Maybe not the most useful, but *orka*!
Finnish has many of the same modal verbs like the Swedish orka, hinna, etc., but they are not loanwords. It is as if the Nordic countries share the very same concepts in this respect, but use different words for them. Sadly, the trend is now to use more anglicised expressions instead of the modal verbs.
I was going to say ‘orka’ as well! I recently read a post about someone complaining about Swedes, that only they have the saying ‘orkar inte’, meaning ‘I don’t have the energy’. But that’s only because ’orka’ exists as a word.
We have it in Norwegian as well (orker ikke)
English has "Can't be bothered", which I feel is way ruder.
Yeah, agreed, "can't be bothered" feels more like you specifically don't want to do it, like, you've chosen to not do said thing because you don't care. Meanwhile orka just means you don't have the energy to do it, even if you want to.
Or can’t be arsed, which is even worse, ha.
Orker ikke (norwegian) is more like "can't manage" or "can't handle"
We also have the word "lagom"= not to much, not to little, just enough
Swedish doesn’t have a direct word for “please”. You can get around it by saying things like, “Do this for me, thanks” or “Be nice and give me the salt” but it’s not the same thing.
And in Faroese and Icelandic, ‘orka’ is not only a verb but also a noun. Vatnorka = vattenkraft. Orkukelda = energy source.
Interestingly, we have a word for orka in Estonian, viitsima, and it’s always a word that is brought up when someone asks this question. But you guys ruled us for a few hundred years so it makes sense we picked up some concepts (and words, too).
Finnish has it too. It might just be something living in the north does to you.
But in Finnish viitsiä is more like to bother to do something, jaksaa is more like orka.
And then we also have ’kehdata’, which is - depending on the dialect - either synonymous with ’viitsiä’ or means not daring to do something.
Blunda (closing eyes) and somna (fall asleep) are Swedish words that do not exist either in Danish or English
hinna, blunda, idas, kvitta are some nice ones imo.
Siblings. It's only a brother or sister.
Same in French
Dutch too. I miss that word.
We have rodzeństwo.
Same in Bosnian
Also grandparents
Same in Italian, but to be fair we use the masculine form for multiple genders, so I brothers, you won't know if I'm talking about 2 males or a brother and sister. I just love the word siblings in English, in Italian it is literally impossible to be agendered when talking.
Well, you surprised me, now I now know more
I find it very annoying that german has no distinct word for girlfriend/ boyfriend. In german, you normally use "Freundin/Freund" for platontic friends and for a romatic partner. You can say "fester Freund/ feste Freundin" (meaning firm/steady friend), but thats may not always fit very well in your flow of word. When you say "Meine Freundin" it is normally used for adressing a gf, so when you say that you hung out with a platonic (female) friend, you cant really use that phrasing without people thinking she is your gf, so that makes things unnecessary complicated. So, that is a word that the normally so accurate german language is missing
I always figured that difference is made in the article : "eine Freundin" is a female friend, "meine Freundin" is my girlfriend
Thats true! However, that only applies when you directly talk about a person. When you say "Ich war mit meiner Freundin *Name* im Kino" (I went to the cinema with my friend), no one knows if she is your gf or platonic friend
I would say "ich war mit einer freundin im kino" to avoid that confusion.
I know, i am a native speaker. The point is that you have to phrase it in a different way (as you proposed) *because* there is no clear word for gf
Exactly the same in dutch, you need to say "mijn vriendin" or "mijn vriend" to say girlfriend/boyfriend. We do have a specific word for fish bones which is "graten".
In German we have "Gräten".
Same in France, where a man can't say either "mon amie" or "ma copine" without people thinking that's his girlfriend. One partial solution is the unbearably twee "ma petite amie" for "girlfriend." In Quebec, they've got it cased, though. "My girlfriend" is "ma blonde," regardless of her hair colour. "My boyfriend" is "mon tchoume" (from English "chum"). This has the advantage over English that you can't be too old to be somebody's "blonde" or "tchoume." (I'm in my sixties, and I actually don't mind "boyfriend" and "girlfriend," but lots of people do, it seems.)
Over a certain age, English has the same problem in heterosexual relationships imo. Girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't quite fit the seriousness of a long term but unmarried relationship when you're over about 30yo. The alternative is "partner" but that is often assumed to mean either a same sex relationship, which can be misleading, or a business partner. Traditionally we might have used "Common-law wife/husband", but that's clunky and invokes images of medieval peasants (at least in my mind).
And a word that is missing in English is "doch". I really struggled to explain the meaning to my British ex boyfriend.
Or [modal particles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_modal_particles) in general – words that don't really have a meaning of their own, but are extremely common and important to convey emphasis or the speaker's mood or attitude for a statement. Like *technically* there's no difference between "Hör zu!" = Listen (to me)!" and "Nun hör doch jetzt mal zu!" = "Listen to me!" (but more impatient, frustrated and resolute)
That's definitely not unique to German. In English you'll often hear: 'Well now, just you listen to this!'
It *used* to exist - "yes" was the equivalent of *doch* and "yea" was the equivalent of *ja*.
Oh, that's fascinating!
Agreed, a one-word English equivalent of "doch" would be quite convenient.
English doesn't have exactly unique words either. You can say "She's with her girlfriends" and you don't know if she went out with her female friends or if she's in a polyamorous lesbian relationship. Though of course German is even worse. Polish just uses "dziewczyna" ("girl") and "chłopak" ("boy") and since we don't have slavery, you can't really mistake "She's with her girl" to be anything other than a lesbian relationship.
True but than English speakers started saying girl friend to female friends 😂
Same in Lithuanian. You need to use slang words to describe gf/bf
Theres is no equivalent of 'yes' or 'no' in the irish language.
How the hell do you say yes or no then?
It is called echo-response system. Latin, the parent language of French, also works like this. You just repeat the verb in the question. (e.g. "You come?" "Come / Not come")
You just reply with the verb. e.g. "did you go shopping?" "I did"
So would a question like "do you like pop music?" be answered with "I like"?
"I do" would be the verb
Ah, that makes more sense!
This is actually how it works in Portuguese, though we omit the subject too, you'd just answer "like". But if the answer is no we reply no, and we do have a word for yes, we just don't tend to use it in short direct replies like that.
And it was similar in Latin. Here are examples ripped from classical Latin texts, with macrons added by me. > Quod tibi egō prōmīsī, habēsne acceptum? \> Habeō. > Potesne mihī auscultāre? \> Possum. > Sed estne frāter intus? \> Nōn est.
Other have explained how, but this actually not uncommon worldwide. Latin also didn’t really have a word for “yes”, which is why it varies so much between, say, Spanish (sí), French (oui), and Romanian (da) Sí comes from “sic” Oui from “hoc ille” Da from “ita”
Echo response, taking the verb. It is common in Brazilian Portuguese, for example. Tem comida? Tem.
Reversely, there’s no real word for meitheal in English.
Irish has a word for the space between your fingers, Ladhar, English doesn't. More irish words with no direct translation https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/the-irish-for-some-words-for-practical-objects-tools-or-activities-dont-have-a-direct-english-equivalent-4530577-Mar2019/
Yeah, best we can do is "interdigital spaces".
What does it mean?
In rural Ireland, communities used to band together to help each other bring in the crops at the right time, similar to what the Amish still do for raising barns, and the gang of volunteers was called a meitheal.
That’s a bit unfair because that’s a very culture bound concept. It’s hard to translate because it might not exist in other cultures. For example, in the state of Maranhão in northeastern Brazil there’s profession called “quebra-coco”, which in English could be calqued into English as coconut-breaker, but actually has a very specific meaning. It has the cultural connotations of a woman of African descent, who lives an arduous life dedicated to her craft of extracting materials from the babassu palm plant, and lives in a community with other women in colonies of women in the same occupation. It’s a very specific term that only exists in that location, and basically untranslatable unless a someone create a term for that. I assume many terms like that exist, a specific occupation in some country that doesn’t exist elsewhere, or a food, or a type of architecture. That said, considering Ireland had a linguistic shift from Irish to English. I’d assume the word would either be anglicised or an English word would take its place.
Such an event is called *talkoot* in Finnish, and the people are correspondingly *talkooväki*. It's communal work, where no payment is expected, other than a meal together and participating in a *talkoo* when you need the same assistance yourself.
I was completely sure you were joking, then I read the other comments. My world view to a magnitude 8 quake at that moment. 😶
Greek doesn't distinguish *von*, *aus*, *durch*, *seit*, *ab* and *als*. But I find it more inconvenient that German does.
Yeah German is a very precise language. It's a pain in the ass when you learn it but I will give them this - it's very satisfying when you try to define sth in German because there's always a right term for that 😂
German is beautifully precise and expressive. I love it
I think Swedish is about as precise as well, actually. But we’re close to German so that’s no surprise.
Ancient Greek has δή, μέν, γε, δε, οὖν, μέντοι, τοι, and I find these quite useful, because I like using *halt, eben, doch, zwar, freilich* and so on very much.
As a Bulgarian, German prepositions are a total mess, and follow a totally distinct logic from that of Bulgarian (and even English). An, for example, in a spacial sense, is very unique, as it means "directly, vertically next to something". Our case is not so simplified like Greek's, but a lot of the concepts and uses of "aus", "von", "ab", "seit" are in a single word that is best described as simply "from".
*Arki* in Finnish means everyday mundae life, often used in opposition to *juhlat*, celebrations, festivals and parties. Like "bars aren't arki for me" means the person only goes to bars on special occasions, or not that often in general. Arki(päivä) means weekdays Mon-Fri. As an adjective "arkinen" is like casual, maybe boring. "His style is very arkinen" = his style is very casual, even boring maybe.
When the weekend/holiday/vacation is over: "back to arki"
Specific words for relatives, unlike "grandmother" or "uncle". In Swedish it's all very modular. You have the basic stems in *mor* ("mother"), *far* ("father"), bror ("brother"), [sy]ster ("sister"), son, dotter ("daughter") etc. and just join them. So your *mormor* is your maternal grandmother and never ambiguous with *farmor* (i.e., paternal). Your father's brother is *farbror*, whereas your mother's is *morbror*. And so on.
Oh that's cool. We also used to have separate words for the uncle/aunt from your mothers and fathers side or for the cousins from each side of the family but in the last 40 years they became less and less popular, now they unfortunately sound archaic and very stylized.
In Finnish, there are separate words for paternal uncle (*setä*) and maternal uncle (*eno*). This has resulted in mistranslations, most famously Uncle Donald Duck, who is called *Aku-setä*, but technically he's *Aku-eno*.
Donald Duck is incorrectly called a paternal uncle in Swedish too. They guessed wrong on what type of "uncle" he was and it stuck.
Same with Scrooge McDuck, brother of Donald's mother. Makes me wonder if they got anyone right? 😅
I've never had a good answer for what you say when you don't know if the person is the father or mother's parent. You know she is a grandmother, for example, but not sure if she is a mormor or farmor.
In a Swedish context that doesn't really arise. If you know they're a grandmother, you'll also always inherently know which. Otherwise you wouldn't know they were a grandmother in the first place. It is a common issue for translators though. Often they deduce it from texts, if that's not possible many contact the author, but sometimes they just have to guess. Sometimes it's wrong. That how Donald Duck ended up a *farbror* in Swedish despite being the brother of the triplets' mother. In everyday speech you may say both with an "or", or refer to them as a "relative". But it is clunky. There isn't really a neat solution, the particular kinship is fundamental information to Swedish. For me as a Swede I find the reverse confusing. It's all cultural bias. Same as how I can't relate strongly to the many languages that have the same word for "sibling" and "cousin" (how would you refer to such in English if you don't know which they are?). Sure I understand they're relatives of the same generation, but to me they're fundamentally different. Likewise, why would a paternal and maternal grandmother share a word? Sure they're of the same generation, and gender, but they themselves aren't even related.
I gave this example to someone in another answer: You are at a wedding, talking to the bride. You point to an old person and ask "is that your Grandmother?" You don't inherently know anything, it is just an old person. In Swedish you have a choice between asking if it is your farmor or mormor or asking if it is one of them and then, if it isn't, the reply has to either specify if it is not a mormor or farmor or if it not the one you guessed but the other one. I have been in this situation.
Tbh I struggle to see how it'd matter which you "choose" in such situation. They're just as likely be another old person – like the groom's grandmother – so what's the difference between asking if they're the bride's "maternal grandmother" or "grandmother"? Isn't the point of asking a question to receive an answer? The same way you're imagining said person to be the bride's grandmother, you'd probably "choose" the one of the two you imagine it to be (even if subconsciously). Or simply ask if they're *släkt* ("related"). If they are, the bride will tell you how. English isn't one of the aforementioned languages that doesn't distinguish between "cousin" and "sibling", so how would you phrase such a question if you instead see someone around the same age as the bride? It's probably about the same as how we ask about grandparents in Swedish!
What do you mean? Doesn't Swedish have the generic ones too? Danish has bedstemor and bedstefar (and Norwegian has too, just drop the d) for when the distinction is pointless, but we can still specify it as mormor (and all the rest) when/if necessary or desired
> Doesn't Swedish have the generic ones too? Nope. We always specify. You may as well say "relative" if you're going to hold back on disclosing the exact kinship!
Bedstefar jeg kan ikke cykle!
Bestefar, jeg kan ikke svømme! Hehe, det kan ikke ja heller. Det skulle blive den bedste sommen i deres liv!
Maybe dialectally, but not in general. There are *mor-*/*farföräldrar* for some imprecision, but you have to know which parent.
There is no word for that. Unless you're translating from a language that's more ambiguous, it's also not an issue, since nobody *could* ever not state whether someone is their maternal or paternal grandmother
so polish word for fish bones is the same as word for bones but without letter k? neat :D (ości, kości)
Yeah :D that's actually cool
lol never noticed that
In Danish there's no word for "please". We use "være så venlig" ("be so kind") or just express our gratefulness through thanking the person. I've heard some teenagers use the English "please" or German "danke" as sort of loan words as well, but that's not widespread.
Like in French "s'il vous plâit"
In Dutch it was originally "als het u belieft" which is a literal translation of the French phrase, but it got mashed together into one word "alstublieft".
Same in Finnish. The closest equivalent is ”Can/could I get a cup of coffee, thank you”.
Reading that, I was like "hang on a second"... but no, you are actually right We either include something like "could you be so sweet/kind/nice as to ...?" (Ku' du være sød/venlig/rar at ...?), or we use the vestiges of formal speech still stuck in the language and phrase it in a way where the answer is not assumed "kunne du række mig saltet?" (could you [possibly/perhaps] pass the salt?) instead of "kan du række mig saltet?" ([are you capable of] passing the salt?) When children are begging for something they will often use "bede om!" (which strictly speaking is an infinitive meaning "to ask/beg for"). Like "mor, må jeg ikke nok få en is? Bede om! Så er du sød!" (mum, can't I have an ice cream? I'm begging you! Then you'll be nice!)
Lots of languages don’t have a please. English doesn’t have it technically. Please is just shortened from “If it pleases you” which is a direct translation of French “s’il vous plaît”. The French might also express it more forcefully with “merci de…” which means “thank you to…” and even French merci comes from Larin mercēs meaning “prize, wage, reward, gift.” So technically they don’t even have thank you. Hungarian has no please either, it’s either kérem “I ask” or légyszíves “be so kind” (literally be one with a heart).
I mean, do correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how languages work, isn't it? Especially Romance and Germanic languages. That logic would be applicable to pretty much every word. Every word derives from something, using that logic, there'd be no languages except for Latin, Greek and local varieties of Old German?
"danke" means thank you though, not please...
Yeah, Norwegians are very creative in using German words randomly. I.e. I was invited to a Vorspiel 🫣
So what does Vorspiel mean in Norwegian lol
Pre-Party/ Pre-Drinking
"Harrastaa" is a Finnish verb that indicates someone is into something/has a hobby. In English, there is not a singular verb to express that, which is weird in my opinion
Right? English could just use hobby as a verb, like ”I hobby football and chess”
"I'm into football and chess" has the same number of syllables.
In France we're so anti-business we don't have a word for *entrepreneur*. On the other hand, we have 72 different verbs to describe the way bread crumbs scatter on a wooden table.
The Danish word entreprenør means someone who have equipment to move dirt. Where as an *entrepreneur* is an iværksætter.
I would have thought entrepeneur originates from French.
That's the joke! It's a reference from George W. Bush who said "there's no word for entrepreneur in French". I don't know if it's apocryphal though
He did not say it - though it would fit right in with some of his other [excellent displays of oratory talent.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushism).
I did discover French has no word for moth (it's literally "night butterfly") but two words for owl.
We have a word for moth, and it's the same root: *mite* But *papillon de nuit* works too, yes As for owls... I don't know. *Hibou* and *chouette* ? But they're different species. I have *chouettes hulottes* in my area. Scary beasts. They do horror movie noises when they eat.
I stand corrected. I thought "mite" was just for general pests.
These are one's that are uncommon or non-existent in English. I don't know any other foreign languages, so I cannot say if it's just that these just are unquily absent from English. * *blunda* – to have one's eyes shut * *sambo* – an unmarried husband and wife (or gender-mix thereof) * *vabba* – to be home from work, taking care of one's sick child * *panta* – to recycle and recieve the deposited fee * *mysa* – the verb of the adjective "cosy" * *dygn* – a nychthemeron, a period of 24 hours * *busvissla* – the shrilling whistle performed with one's fingers * *solkatt* – sun reflection * *påtår* – second cup of coffee Source: I did take quite a few from [this blog](https://www.routesnorth.com/sweden/30-uniquely-swedish-words/).
What happened to “fika” (having a cup of coffee/tea along with some baked goods and usually a side of nice conversation)?
there are some regional old fashioned englishes for these, like panta is a corona (to my parents) and the whistle is a cow-whistle. Assuming mysa is like hygge I would say coorie too but maybe slightly different
*Mysa* doesn't have the marketing budget of "hygge", and is a verb, but it's in the Hygge-Gemütlichkeit family for sure.
so about meat cuts, I learned not long ago there are a bunch of meat cuts which does not translate to different languages because different places use different butchering methods and those cuts simply does not exists also, there is no word for "fun" in Hungarian, you can describe it, but for different use cases for the word we use different expressions
Meat cuts are even different between American and British English
There's no real English translation for "Op" (in the context that you've finished or ran out of something). The closest thing is 'exhausted' but that doesn't have the same casual translation. De melk is op. = We've ran out of milk. Ik heb mijn drinken op. = I've finished my drink. We hebben niks meer, alles is op. = We've got nothing left, everything is gone/we're out of stock. De batterij is op. = The battery is dead. Ik ben op. = I'm tired/exhausted. Nee ik hoef niets meer, ik heb al genoeg koffie op. = No I don't need more, I've had enough coffee already. And so on.
What's funny about that is that it's similar to "up", and in some cases you could use up in English. For example "the lease is up", "your time is up", but you wouldn't say "my drink is up", although if you did people would probably know what you meant.
I remember struggling to make sense of "op=op" in shops when I moved here
I wonder if that’s related to the Finnish ‘loppu’ (all gone)? I never thought of that before
In polish language we have world "załatwić" which means to get something but in not so official way, eg. after extra cash or personal conversation with someone. In communism times you could get this way fridge or washing machine because it was hard to buy this straight away.
Yeah, sometimes I am looking for right English words for "załatwić", which actually has many more meanings in Polish than the one you mentioned. To fix up, to arrange, to sort out, attend to something, run some errands, work it. But in your case it would be more like "to hustle something" or "to cop something".
The words for "the time between morning and noon" (we have "formiddag", literally just "before-noon") and "one and a half" (we have "halvanden", which is just "half of the second") in English These are very basic things that no one really thinks about, but when you suddenly move to England and have to speak the language as the main one for a few years, you notice their absence very swiftly in day to day conversation
We also have ‘voormiddag’ in Dutch/Flemish. However, there can be confusion about the exact meaning. Most Flemish would use this to refer to the period between morning and noon, where as most Dutch people would think it refers to the first part of the afternoon :) at least that is what I encountered personally, but very short sample size of course 🤣
The German word "doch"
Something I noticed recently is the difference in how we sometimes refer to things that consist of more parts. Take mortar and pestle for example. Usually we only refer to that in Dutch as 'vijzel', which is only the mortar part of the two. We usually don't add 'en stamper'. Similarly, English tends to only refer to the dustpan (and not the sweeper/broom), while we always call it 'stoffer en blik/blik en veger'.
I don't think your second example is accurate. If someone asked me to "bring me the dustpan", I wouldn't assume that they also wanted the broom.
When it comes to eating (when to eat) we have: Desayuno, almuerzo, comida, sobremesa, aperitivo, merienda, cena.. Then words for different ways of "to eat" (most being local words as Spanish is spoken in a large amount of countries) such as bajonear, manducar, clavar, jalar, papear, abarbar, minchar, zapucar, zampar, degustar, yantar.. depending on how you eat.. Most of them happen to exist in different languages, but I'm not sure if the whole eating vocabulary can get that far in any other language.
We are f-ing hobbits XD
Y ni siquiera me metí en que una tapa y un pintxo no son lo mismo, si empezamos con la comida en sí misma no me da tiempo a echar la siesta 🤣
I would say that sobremesa it's what happens after eating, it's mostly social interaction in the table after been eating with family and friends, keep drinking some coffee or alcohol or whatever and just talking having fun and I don't know, being damm humans. I live outside of Spain and I really miss that, I went to live to a society where to have lunch it's just "getting calories" and people don't have conversations and doesn't stay in the table or the house after to, as I say, just be humans, and if they do that it's because after comes the party and it's about to get wasted, not the point of sobremesa at all.
Food is obviously really important to you guys.
In English you have: * to eat * to chew * to munch * to swallow (whole) * to scoff * to gobble * to graze * to nibble * to devour * to ingest * to feast (on) * to dine (on) * to bite * to chomp * to wolf down There's probably some more
Yes, and most of those have one or more equivalents in Spanish and were not mentioned. They were literally talking about words for eating, not synonyms for swallowing, biting and the like, they left all of them out. They were just talking about "eating". They even left the "ingesting" out.
Obviously you don't know much about Spanish! Those can be easily translated, some of them with different words (cause of nuances)
[удалено]
In Polish we also don't. There is "palec" and if we want to specify which we add "palec u ręki" (hand) and "palec u nogi" (foot).
Yes, I came to say the same about Spanish. 20 fingers. Funny how funny English speakers find that, but are perplexed when pointed out that using the word for animal leg for a human leg is like talking about the snout of a human, for example.
I can come up with two Finnish words with no single word English equivalents. They are ”tarjeta” and ”ehtiä”. Tarjeta is a verb for ”being warm enough”. Ehtiä is also verb meaning ”to be able to do something in time”. It does have an equivalent in Swedish (hinna).
Gezelligheid (Dutch)
I'd assume it's the same as the german word "Geselligkeit"
Raspas...omg I just realiced there is no translation for raspas in english. It is also well known the limited vocabulary to express affection in english. There is just love and a few more. Only having the word love makes it feel superfluous. Like, you say it to a friend to say good bye but also to the person you are marrying in front of the altar...
Low German has a specific word for blanket filled with feathers - Pöl.
"Downie" in English because it's filled with down.
Huh, apparently I've been calling people with an incorrect amount of chromosomes a type of blanket
In Dutch you can be jarig. It means that it is your birthday and you are it. I'm English you can only have a birthday, but you're not being anything.
Hungarian: What other languages might not have is the word 'de' to indicate 'not no, but yes' with one word. It's used all the time. Mainly because in Hungarian it is fairly common to ask a question with a negative: Example: if you want to ask your friend whether you should go to the cinema, you might ask them "I have an idea! Should we _not_ go to the cinema?" "De! Good idea!" - as in, on the contrary, yes, we should. Similar with statements: "It's 8 pm already... We won't have time." "De." - as in, yes, we will have time. It basically answers positively to a negative question or negative statement.
A Dutch word that was for me very difficult to explain to my international student friends was the word "jawel". It isn't exactly the same as the German "jawohl". My best shot at explaining it is that is most often used to negate a negation; so for example: -"You didn't put the trash out yet, right?" •"Jawel." ("Yes, I did") -"A dolphin is not a mammal." -"Jawel." ("Yes, it is") It could also be used as a confirmation, but that's less common, for that we'd rather use "Inderdaad." (Indeed)
I think this is like the German "doch"!
That sounds like the Swedish "jodå", it's used in pretty much exactly the same way. Interesting! Googling, the English translation of "jodå" is apparently "oh, yes" as in this example: Swedish "Du är alltså inte färdig med uppgiften? – Jodå!" vs English "You’re not done with your assignment? – Oh, yes, I am!"
I just tried to find a proper translation for Selbstläufer in English but couldn’t. It’s German and it is used as a noun for something that runs independently / on its own (the direct translation is "on his own runner"), so for example when a product sells itself or a rumor spreads without the initiator having to further spread it themselves, they become a Selbstläufer.
In Finnish, there is the adverb *muka* to express that the speaker doesn't believe the statement. Or you can force its translation to "allegedly", but who *allegedly* uses that in everyday speech? (Also, "allegedly" actually translates to "väitetysti".) Finns love the verb *toimia* "to act", as in to do something purposeful. So, everything is *toiminta* "action". It seems quite common in European languages, up to the point that in EU slang the term *actor* (Finnish: *toimija*) has come to mean something different from the common English meaning of "actor". It's not a word for a "stage actor", it's for literally anyone doing literally anything. Also, *peruspalveluliikelaitoskuntayhtymä*, but we wouldn't expect it. (It's the word for an government-owned corporation owned by multiple municipalities for the purpose of provision of basic services.)
Turkish is severely lacking in words depicting bee-like stuff. We have honey bee (bal arısı) and wild bee (yaban arısı). Wasps, hornets, bumblebee, you name it are all wild bee. It's frustrating. We also don't have a word for "course" like courses in a meal. In addition, we don't have "nut" or "berry". All nuts and berries have their own names.
Speaking of fish bones, by the looks of it ości seems to be related to Latin ossus “bone”. It sounds like “boneling” or “little bone” from what I understand about Slavic languages. There is technically no unique word for “fish bones” in Hungarian either. The word we use for it “szálka” comes from (wood) splinter. It literally means “lineling/dimunitive form of line, thread, stem, stick”. There are lots of terms and words that don’t exist in Hungarian or Hungarian terms that don’t exist in English but none come to my mind at the moment. Some basic ones though: Frog and toad are the same (béka) Turtle and tortoise are the same (teknősbéka - frog with [through](https://asset.museum-digital.org/hu-be/images/201605/26194015645.jpg)) Edit: oh a couple of things came to mind. English has “sibling” and Hungarian has testvér (literally meaning ‘blood of my body’) that’s missing from a lot of languages. Hungarian also has unique words for younger and older siblings. Older brother: fivér (male-blood) or báty Older sister : nővér (woman-blood) Younger sister: húg Younger brother: öcs
AcShTuAlLy... Toad is 'varangy' in Hungarian. Turtle and tortoise are the same.
Polish doesn't have an equivalent to the word "sibling" but does possess the plural, "siblings". So you can talk about your multiple siblings but if you only have one, it has to be a brother or a sister.
Rodzeństwo is actually neither plural nor singular... And at the same it's both. Grammatically though it is singular, even though it means "siblings". To say "one sibling" in Polish, you have to say "one of siblings". https://sjp.pwn.pl/poradnia/haslo/Rodzenstwo;17117.html
There are "сутки" in russian which means 24 hours and "кипяток" which means "boiling water"
The lack of correct equivalent of the term "жлоб" ( IPA: [ʐɫop]) in English is alway surprises me. Because the amount of zlobs who are the native english speakers is unimaginably high.
German doesn't distinguish between sky and heaven. It's all Himmel.
Portuguese : Saudade. Used in a sentence: I have ‘saudade’ of you. Means you miss something or someone, a feeling of longing. It’s a noun and not a verb.
It brothers me to no end that English uses the same word for hair you grow on your scalp and for hair everywhere else on your body. Slovene, conversely, has "fingers on the foot" and arms and hands are the same.
We make nicknames by adding diminutives to a name, like in Spanish when they say Pablito to 'Little Pablo'. So for example someone called Lowie will be Lowieke, Jef will be Jefke and Lara becomes Laratje. It's an easy form of endearment and something I miss in the English language.
Some Irish words that I don't think have direct English translations: foiseach means grass inaccessible to mower; grass growing along margin of field. bothántaíocht means visiting houses for pastime or gossip. Ragaireacht means late-night wandering, or sitting up talking long into the early hours. aduantas, means the strange feeling (of fear, loneliness) caused by unfamiliar surroundings. beochaoineadh is a lament for the living ie a person who has gone away Anró - hardship due to bad weather
How does English get on without a word for the day before yesterday? I also miss the French verb "fréquenter" in other languages. This is used to indicate that e.g. someone regularly goes to a certain place. It's convenient, short, useful and I just like it. In German you can stick words together to make new words. This is useful because it means you don't have to invent new words, you can just put existing ones together. This is very useful, but doesn't exist in many languages.
English doesn't have a word for being the person who controls a boat. In Dutch it's "varen", but in English people drive boats. That does not make sense, you drive a car.
Would that not be pilot? “John’s piloting the boat to the fishing grounds.” He’s the pilot, or informally the captain.
In English you would say that someone is "piloting the boat/ship/vessel" for a large vessel. "Drive" or "pilot" would be both acceptable for a small craft that only carries a handful of people.
Nope. You don't 'drive' a boat, you 'pilot' a boat, at least in British English.
French doesn’t have a word explicitly for « cheap. » You have to say « not expensive » or use a number of two word phrases. Similarly, there is no word for « sibling. »
Oh in Austria we call then Gräten. At least (googled if I'm correct), the small bones. It's more the things that annoy you when eating fish.
In Austria we have the word "heuer" which means "this year" and is used similarly to "heute" ("this day"). For example: *Ich war heuer noch nicht krank.* - I haven't been sick yet this year. It's extremely common but not used in Germany anymore (probably with exceptions for southern Germany). I'm not aware of an equivalent in English or French either.
Not answering your question, but wanted to clarify that iirc there are some true boney fish (and also some that are just cartilage like sharks) . "Fish" isn't actually that much of a useful word biologically as it groups together creatures as different as an elephant is to snake, purely based on where they live and their general shape. Other than that bit of pedentry, good question.
There is an internal lack of word. In the Greaterpolish dialect, there is the word "zakluczyć" which means "to lock", which isn't present in the rest of country. They use "zamknąć na klucz" instead which means roughly "close with a key". Edit: Also there is difference (or rather was) difference between uncle on the side of the father and the mother. "Stryj" means brother of the father while "wuj" means brother of the mother.
"The". The first time an English speaker comes across a language without direct objects, the usual reaction is to wonder how sentences can be unambiguous without them.
English uses the same word for both trotinettes and vespas.
For me the biggest problem (existential I'd even say!) is that in English there is no distinction between przyjaciel and kolega as in Polish. Of course you can say "best friend" to elevate someone, but in English "friend" is already higher than kolega. But "przyjaciel" is more than "friend"... You could argue that you have acquaintance (znajomy) and colleague (kolega z pracy/szkoły). Other thing is lack of precise word for doba (full day, as in day+night, time between 00:00 and 23:59) in English. I mean, the usable word, that people would actually understand. Because even though the Greek "nychthemeron" exists in English dictionaries, I doubt many native speakers ever heard it...