Complex Numbers

I Would Like a Word

One reason for learning a different language is to learn wonderful new curse words. Or, as this bit from Cracked points out, just words we don't have in English.

    6 Foreign Words to Describe What You’re Feeling Right Now  

...except it's the end of December, so all I'm feeling right now is cold, and there are perfectly good English words for that.

Are you going through something right now that you’re having trouble putting into words? Feeling a little je ne sais quoi, a little pomme de terre?

Okay, that made me chuckle.

If you’re unable to articulate what you’re experiencing, that doesn’t make your emotions invalid.

It does make you want to reevaluate your writing career. As words are kinda important to writing, here they are now:

6. Saudade: Empty Sadness for What Is Lost

I never encountered this word (from Portuguese) until just over a year ago. How do I know this? Because I blogged about it: "No Geese Involved" 

Unlike nostalgia, saudade speaks to a longing for something you’re sure to never experience again, which is a component of your sadness you need to acknowledge.

That's not exactly what that previous article stated, once again demonstrating that one should never get one's wisdom from one source.

5. Ilunga: Eventually Unforgiving

In 2004, linguists convened to vote on which word, in any language, is the hardest to translate.

This was before "covfefe."

The hardest word comes from the Tshiluba language from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The word is ilunga. An ilunga is a person who “is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.”

That's... really quite specific.

4. Perendination: One Step Beyond Procrastination

Oooh, I knew there'd be something in here that could describe me.

In Latin, we have a word for putting something off for the day after tomorrow. When you do that, you perendinate, which is one step beyond procrastination. Procrastination is for amateurs.

I must insist that this word be added to English immediately. Well, tomorrow. Well... one of these days.

3. Kummerspeck: Emotional Overeating

When you’re sad — not just from saudade, but for various other reasons, perhaps resulting from your perendination or being an ilunga — the clichéd move is to grab a pint of ice cream and eat it, right out of the container.

Can't. I don't buy ice cream anymore, precisely because it's not a pint anymore. There's a word for that process, too, but I hate it.

In German, they have a word for this type of binge: kummerspeck. The -speck refers to pork fat, so the cleanest translation into English is “grief bacon.”

Praise the lard!

2. Mudita: Pleasure in Others’ Joy

If you take pleasure in someone else’s suffering, we have an English word for that: schadenfreude. Well, it’s not an English word exactly.

It is now. If English speakers use a word enough, it becomes English. How much is enough? Depends on who you ask. But saying schadenfreude isn't English is like saying kindergarten isn't English.

In Vietnamese, they call it hỷ. In Chinese, they call it xǐ. In Japanese, they call it ki. Several other languages call it mudita, which was originally a Sanskrit word and is a whole concept in Buddhism.

Ironically, Buddhism (at least from this outsider's perspective) is more focused on suffering.

1. Swaffelen: Penis Smacking

And this one, you're just going to have to go to the link to see for yourselves. Bonus: it's Dutch. Sort of.