Asking non-native English speakers.
In JavaScript,
this.Buddhist devs meditate frequently on the differences and similarities between
thisandself
Chez
It’s a preposition meaning “at the home/house/place” but can also be use figuratively. Really super cool.
My first room share ‘Chez Penez’ makes so much more sense now.
“Kombinować” very Polish word for a very Polish a activity/philosophy. To make things work / get something done / take care of something in way that work for us, but are not the expected way to do things (though, ‘kombinowanie’ is often actually expected). It might be doing a job using the tools that are available and not thise that should be used, it might be a genuine invention, It might be using your contacts for favour (like getting a doctor appointment), it might be plain cheating.
A little bit like ‘hacking’ and also can be a good thing or a bad thing.
“Wykombinuję coś” = “don’t worry I will take care of that” “Co za kombinator” = “what a cheaty bastard”
Dude, the word you’re looking for in English is to hustle.
Source: am Polish.
In Spanish that would be “picaresca” and Spanish people also think it’s something that doesn’t really exist in other cultures.
There’s also scheming, but i don’t think either one is a 1 to 1 equivalent.
close cousin to jury-rig
The Hungarian adjective “ügyes”. It’s used to describe someone when they do something ably/skillfully/cleverly. (Doesn’t necessarily imply a learned ability, can be innate.) It usually implies an activity involving manual dexterity, but can also be used for mental problem-solving.
When used as an exclamation, it basically means “Well done!”
Fjøs is where farm animals are kept. “Barn” is more general and translates to “Låve”, while Fjøs doesn’t really have an English translation.
Nisse is a mythological creature that is part goblin, part santa, part Gnome, but not really either of them. They’re usually benign and pretty cool.
Hygge (noun) /hyggelig (adjective) means having a cosy, lighthearted or fun atmosphere, usually in company of others
Fjoøs ≈ Paddock or Corral ?
Kind of, but referring more to the building itself.
Hygge became too popular so that’s started making it’s way into English. Hopefully that one sticks around. The pronunciation will never be correct though. Nisse sounds awesome though.
What’s the difference between a Låve and a Fjøs?
Fjøs is specifically where animals are kept. Låve is more generic, but it’s usually where you store stuff such as hay and produce. Sometimes the two are combined into one building and It’s common to refer to the ground floor as Fjøs, and the floor above as Låve.
Fjøs
Animal pen or animal barn.
Hygge
That one I could never understand why Danish people think it’s not “safe and cozy”. Everytime they told me about hygge, or described it, etc, it was always safe and cozy. Like a damn Gryffindor common room.
Bukkake.
It’s just the noun-form of the verb “kakeru”, in this context, to pour or splash a liquid, with the intensifier “bu” in front of it to suggest it’s done forcefully. Like in bukkake udon, where the broth is splashed onto the udon noodles.
It also has a certain other, rather more precisely defined, meaning.
Keeping in mind that any and all concepts in this world can be explained and understood by anyone and everyone - and that when this is untrue, only a lack of language and experience are at work - these do not have straightforward counterparts in English with the exact same nuance, I think:
Japanese
潔い、木漏れ日、懐かしい、いただきます、ごちそうさま、よろしく、お疲れ様、儚い、ぼけ、つっこみ、花見、紅葉狩りSwedish
Mångata, lagom, fika, smörgåsbord, ombudsman, klämdag, skadeglädje, orka (verb or exclamation)Hungarian
Meglehetős(en), kárörömMeglehetősen = rather?
like when used as an adjective “this is rather large”
That’s a great counterpart/translation! Nice! :D
Gezellig in Dutch. Used to describe a situation that’s cosy and fun togetherness. Can also be used to describe a place that looks inviting (to have that good time in). I guess 😃
It’s the word extroverts use to blackmail people into coming to social gatherings.
GezelligGesellig
In Spanish.
Sobremesa, the period you stay at the table after lunch or dinner having a coffee or some drinks while chatting.Aprovechar, is basically the opposite of to waste. So depending on the context is to take advantage of something, to make the most of, make a good use, give a second use or reuse leftovers for something else.
Botellon: just drinking and socializing outside, usually something a group of underage kids/young people would do. Not a party, not simply getting drunk. Like hanging out but with some alcohol.
The old-school English word for aprovechar was “thrift” or being thrifty. These days I hear it used mostly in the specific sense of saving cash. I don’t often hear it much anymore in terms of conserving resources, but that is where it came from, and if you use it in that sense people will understand you.
As for sobremesa, that’s not something I’ve enjoyed enough for it to have its own word, unfortunately.
Estrenar: to use/wear something brand new for the very first time. Sometimes when you are estrenando white shoes your classmates in school would try to step on them so they no longer look new.
Second one is “appreciate” in English.
Not really. “Aproverchar” means more like “I have this things that I would normally throw out but I will used for X instead”. You wouldn’t say “I had some left over chicken so I appreciated it to make corquetas”.
Closer to “appropriate” (the verb, not the adjective) but still not quite, it’s too formal
It’s not quite that either. The spanish word for “appropriate” is “apropiar”, and the meaning is the same. Aprovechar has a different meaning.
I second the person before you, that is literally
appreciate (a thing)
Sobremesa
It’s weird there’s no English word for that, now that you point it out, since it’s a pretty common thing.
Shaka, when the walls fell
Timba, his arms wide
Sokath, his eyes uncovered!
Darmok and Jalaad, at the bar.
Jalaad in the bathroom the next morning.
Russian is more productive than English, so there’s a bunch of “we just smushed a bunch of prefixes and suffixes on it” words that don’t have a great English equivalent, like недоперепить – to drink quite a lot but not succeed at drinking too much. I don’t think we properly have листопад which is the equivalent of “snowfall” but for autumn leaves. I really miss успевать – to successfully have enough time to do something. There’s also кипяток – water that has been boiled but then slightly cooled, like 200-205 degrees F. The canonical examples are тоска , which is a kind of melancholy longing, and авось which expresses optimism but I basically never heard anyone actually say.
As someone who speaks the exact bare minimum amount of Russian to get by in Estonia (so basically hello, please, thank you, fuck you, good bye), there’s a couple Russian words of the “not in front of your babushka” type that IMO lose a bit of character when translated to the English phrases that mean the same thing:
похуй - universal answer whenever someone raises a concern
хуйня - very versatile word
I’ll let you do the honor of translating them.
very versatile word
So, pretty much anything and sometimes exact opposite thing 🥲
Pretty much.
In the context of how I hear it used in Estonia at least, it both means something is very annoying, or it means it’s so unimportant it doesn’t matter. It also just means “thingamajig”. I suspect there are use cases I can’t think of right now or ones that I don’t even know.
I think авось has a general meaning similar to “god willing”, or “with some luck”, not simply some optimism. Like “авось успеем” -> “with some luck, we can make it in time”. I do agree it’s an old-fashioned word which I haven’t really heard in a while.
Never hearing anyone express optimism feels like a very Russian stereotype.
It does seem on-brand.
Hygge=gezelligheid
Dreich - there is no direct English equivalent. It’s weather that’s wet and cold and dark and grey and unchanging. It can also mean depressing and tedious for obvious reasons.
Dreary
Dreary is not necessarily wet or cold.
I would never call hot weather “dreary”
Maybe not, but dark, grey, overcast weather might well be dreary. But it wouldn’t be dreich.
I love it, but if I were to translate it to English, I’d say “miserable”. Works for weather (miserable weather is wet and cold and dark and bleh), and it covers the other use cases?
Gloomy
Gloomy is not necessarily wet or cold.
I know this was asking for non-English to English but I keep seeing the title as I scroll and thinking that English has a few words that don’t translate even to itself because they have no actual meaning/definition. Words like “the,” and “a.” They’re more like grammatical tools than real “words.”
the - definite article. a - indefinite article.
See German for some more fun articles.
Guten Appetit! (German term equivalent to “cheers” for drinking - but for eating.)
Mahlzeit has no English translation
Good appetite?Oh, looked it up, it’s not used in the same manner as German, i never knew 😃
That one is really interesting, because a lot of languages has it, from guten apetit, through dobrou chuť to itsdakomasu. But english was out of school that day I suppose.
itsdakomasu
Did you mean itadakimasu?
Because that is what you say in Japanese when you start eating but interestingly it doesn’t mean “Guten Appetit” (basically “have a nice meal”) but “I am (thankfully) going to receive (a nice meal)”. While “Guten Appetit” is about others who are eating alongside you, “itadakimasu” is about the speaker.
Wasn’t itadakimasu religious in origin? Making it something more like the prayer before the food that English-speaking Christians do - “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts, which we are about to receive…”?
English stole 'Bon Apetit" from French fair and square!
As English often does - if it makes sense in another language and is easy for English speakers to understand the context it’s used, they’re quite happy stealing it. Especially French.
Loanwords are a thing in every language, especially English loanwords.
That’s because English isn’t a language, it’s three other languages in a trenchcoat, stealing stuff from every other language.
Celtic, western Germanic (Angles, Saxons, Frisian), Latin, northern Germanic (Danish, Norse), and in 1066 finally French (which is a mixing bowl in its own right). The trenchcoat is way more crowded than you think.
