Language Love from Afar

There are words from other languages that have no equivalent in English.  How many of these do you use? How many didn’t you even know?

Remember the old TV show, Lavern and Shirley? It started:

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Sclemeel, schlemazel, hasenfeffer incorporated.

We’re gonna do it!

Schlemiel and schlimazel are both Yiddish. A schlemiel is an inept clumsy person; a bungler; a dolt. A schlimazel is a chronically unlucky person. So the schlemiel is the person who spills the coffee and the schlimazel is the one on whom it’s spilled.

Tartle (Scots) is ?the nearly onomatopoeic word for that panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember. Good word, right?

German gives us many words for which there is no English equivalent. Some we have incorporated into everyday use like kindergarten (garden of children) and schadenfreude, which is a feeling of enjoyment that comes from seeing or hearing about other people’s woes. How about this one: Backpfeifengesicht: A face badly in need of a fist. I have met those faces but I don’t stand a hope of being able to say that word.

Iktsuarpok (Inuit) is a very useful word if ?you’re waiting for someone to show up you keep going outside to see if they’ve arrived yet?

Pelinti (in Ghana means “to move hot food around in your mouth”) ?so the next time you bite into something hot and then open your mouth while you tilt yourhead and make the sound “aaaarrrahh” this is the word you’ll need.

Faamiti (Samoan) means to make a squeaking sound by sucking air past the lips in order to gain the attention of a dog or child. It’s also the sound we make when we are kissing the air.

While you might think there should be a Yiddish word for this, the word that exists is actually Filipino and the word is Gigil, which is the urge to pinch or squeeze something that is irresistibly cute. Grandmotherly cheek pinches now have a name.

If Goldilocks had been Swedish, when she got to the Baby Bear’s porriage, chair or bed, she might have used the word, “lagom” which means not too much, and not too little, but juuuuust right.

We’ve all done this: scratched our heads as we try to remember something. Well, in Hawaii they have a word for that: Pana Po’o.  Hmm, now where did I leave my gloves?” she said, pana po’oing.

I often get caught gazing vacantly into the distance. It’s my mind processing something I’ve seen or heard and I usually have to tell whomever I’m with that I’ll be right back. Well “boketto” is the Japanese word for it. So now I’m just gonna say, “Boketto Break.”