Don’t believe it if you think that ours is the last word in language
English speakers sometimes like to think of English as the only language you will ever need, but last week Merriam-Webster, the dictionary compilers, have been intent on finding where it falls short. A tweet asked readers to supply favourite words in other languages for which there is no English translation. The thousands of responses revealed not only descriptive gaps in our lexicon, but also defining cultural deficiencies.
We probably already know from bright-eyed Danes about the difficulty of translating their catch-all word for contentment, “hygge”, and from heartfelt Welsh speakers about the unutterable depth of longing expressed in “hiraeth”; our limp equivalents “cosiness” and “nostalgia” don’t come close. But how have we got by without such beautiful concepts as the Arabic “soubhiyé” (“a moment in the morning when you are the only one awake in the house and can enjoy a cup of coffee before the day starts”) or “sobremesa” (that delicious time in Spain when a meal has ended but the conversation hasn’t) or, for that matter, the widely understood but uncoined Finnish concept of “kalsarikännit”: getting drunk at home alone in your pants?
