Ever since I was in grade school and learned all the semi-English words every schoolboy picks up on the playground, I’ve felt pretty secure in my ability to express myself in my native tongue. The proper English vocabulary taught in the classroom, by our teachers, has also been useful on occasion.
But I recently found out that there are 7,138 distinct languages — other than English — spoken in the world, and many of those languages use words that are difficult, if not impossible, to translate into English.
Some experts feel that a human cannot fully appreciate a sensation and emotion, unless they have a word in their language to describe it.
If this is true, then we Americans can’t really understand how people, who speak other languages, experience the world. This could be a good thing, or a bad thing.
For example. The Bantu word mbuki-mvuki refers to an irresistible urge to remove your clothes while dancing. (Emphasis, I suppose, on the ‘irresistible’ part.) This is a feeling I have never personally experienced, mainly because the English language contains no direct equivalent, but also because I am generally shy about dancing naked, even — I presume — if everyone around me spoke Bantu, and had happily shucked off their clothes.
Another example hits closer to home for me: the German word schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another person. I’ve had exactly this experience myself, even though I’ve never tried to find an exact English translation for that word. But my grandfather was German, so maybe it’s inherited.
I’m also fairly sure that my ex-wife Darlene savored feelings of schadenfreude on practically a daily basis, while we were married.
The Inuit people of northern Canada have a word, iktsuarpok, which can be only poorly translated into English, meaning roughly, a sense of intense anticipation while waiting for someone, to the point where you keep going outside to see if they have arrived. To fully appreciate the meaning of iktsuarpok, we need to remember that “going outside to see if they have arrived,” to an Inuit, means stepping out into a raging blizzard at 40 degrees below zero.
Not being an Inuit myself, I would merely glance out the igloo door, now and then, and try to feel contented, chewing some whale blubber.
All of this research into world languages got me thinking about my native tongue (English, mixed with the local vernacular) and about some of the words that we don’t yet have here in America, but which would be useful in describing our feelings, on the odd chance that we wanted our feelings described.
Here are my suggestions for some new American words we could use to communicate our irrepressible urges and feelings of intense anxiety… that people from other lands will have trouble translating.
cybergiggles
A momentary feeling of elation upon learning that the value of your Bitcoin increased by 2% overnight, typically resulting in the purchase of those expensive red tennis shoes you’ve been lusting after on the Zappos website.
avolation
An irresistible urge to squeeze every single avocado in the supermarket bin.
facehooked
A deeply disturbing sense that social media is collecting extremely personal information about you — including your toothbrushing habits, and the color of your underwear — and selling the information to the Chinese.
vaccinsanity
An intense desire, on the part of certain politicians and public health officials, to spend billions of dollars on an experimental chemical mixture, and then try to compel innocent men, women and children to allow the mixture to be injected into their arms.
nostalusion
An inexplicable yearning or nostalgia for the cute girl who sat next to you in high school trigonometry class, who actually couldn’t stand you.
ameriscence
A feeling that only a true American can experience — the feeling that you have been born in the greatest country in human history; that the Founding Fathers created a perfect government (which unfortunately is currently controlled by a bunch of senile criminals); that our free market capitalist economic system provides liberty, justice, and access to wealth for each and every citizen except those who don’t deserve it; and if only every other country could be like America, the world would be an infinitely happier place.
Daily Post readers are invited to use any or all of the above words, free of charge, whenever the need arises. Although I invented them, I feel no ownership. In my humble opinion, ‘feelings’ like anxiety and nostalgia are universal and cannot be ‘owned’ by a single person. If these words help you communicate with the people around you, that will be my just reward.
To anyone who speaks one of the other 7,138 other world languages, I say: Good luck trying to translate these little linguistic nuggets!
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.