User:Jun-Dai/Terms that English lacks

Terms and/or distinctions that seem like they would be useful to have in the English language.

Gaps in the language

These are terms/distinctions that seem like they could exist, and would be useful (it would make the things they describe easier to talk about), but don't. But I'm unclear on whether any language does have these.

• The study of, evaluation of, or fascination with the criteria for claims to superlative attributes
  • There is a very particular form of intellectual ratholing that goes on when deciding how and when to apply superlatives. Before the Burj Khalifa took over all the stablished criteria for tallest building in the world, there was a lot of debate over which building merited that description as, depending on the criteria, different buildings qualified for the title (see w:List_of_tallest_buildings#Ranking_criteria_and_alternatives). Similarly, there is a lot of thought that gets put into deciding what the oldest X is, where X might be bar in Seattle or continuously running film festival or daily newspaper in Canada, etc., and they generally have to do with how one handles various breaks in continuity — changes in ownership, changes in name, changes in location, suspension of service, etc. This leads to lots of intellectual energy spent, often in writing articles, books, etc. Given all of that, and general fascination with world records and other superlatives, it seems strange that there would be no term for the study of (or fascination with) superlatives.

• Things that one learns quickly and easily versus things that take effort and time, but the effort and time comes easily because one is interested or is otherwise able to maintain focus and attention on it
  • I am often told that I'm good at learning languages, or learning scripts. I do, in fact, find it takes a lot of energy and a long time to learn scripts, but because I enjoy it and am able to focus on it, doing this comes easily to me, in a way. Unlike scripts, I find learning to parse languages via listening very taxing and unenjoyable, and I find great difficulty in sustaining the attention required to get better at it, even though I would love to be better at it and often have pretty good motivations. As a result, over time, I learn to hear languages very slowly and have not gotten very good at any of them, whereas I have learned quite a few scripts and orthographies and continue to pursue more. To contrast the above, thanks to years of practicing piano and other instruments, I find it easy to learn new music on the piano — I'm pretty good at sight-reading, and can pick up new music quite quickly compared to someone that is not very advanced in the instrument. Thus, I am good at both learning new music and learning new scripts, but in very different ways, and the English language does not really have words to describe this distinction. Easy and good at conflate these two very different senses of the terms. I have no idea whether there exist languages that make a distinction between those things that come quickly and with little effort vs. those things that take effort and time, but the making the effort comes easily.

• Safe to eat or drink, or: safe to consume
  • Edible is an interesting word — it sounds sort of like it should be spelled eatable and that it has to do with eating. And it does, but via a different etymological path, hence the weird spelling. It would be strange to say that a bottle of water is edible. We have the words and edible, eatable, comestible for eating, and the words drinkable and potable for drinking. One can consume, ingest, swallow, digest, devour, or down both foods and drinks, but there's no simple word for indicating that some category of items are safe to consume/ingest that covers both. One can say consumable, but that implies lots of other things and isn't generally used to refer to the issue of safety.

• Taking something without permission, with the intent to return it
  • The most frequent terms for this are borrowing and stealing, but both ambiguous (borrowing may or may not involve permission and stealing may or may not involve an intent to return). Given the wealth and range of words around both borrowing and stealing, it's surprising (to me) that none has emerged to specifically describe a form of taking that is both unauthorised and temporary. Urban dictionary suggests indian taking, but aside from being offensive, it's also very obscure (no other dictionary seems to have it).
  • Appropriate is sometimes used for this: "I'm going to appropriate Ed's keyboard for the afternoon". This makes some sense, since the key part of the meaning of appropriate is that you are taking something to make use of it (as opposed to taking something just to have it). But, like stealing, the word itself provides no suggestion that the object will be returned when done, even if the context implies it. When one appropriates land to build a highway, there's no implication that it will be returned when the highway is no longer needed. Or when one appropriates another's culture, there's nothing to return.
  • It is totally unclear to me whether such a term exists in any language. Either way, I'm curious about the reason that such a term has not emerged in English.

• Flavours (or perhaps "taste-related experiences") that are not experienced through either the basic tastes detected through taste buds or the detection of volatiles through the olfactory system (smells). E.g., the sting of chillies, the bite of horseradish, the numbing of Szechuan peppercorns, etc.
  • There is an overlapping concept that has been captured in the term mouthfeel, but this also covers things like general texture (slimy, gritty, etc.)
  • I wonder if what I'm talking about can be described as chemesthetic flavours, since all (or most) of these flavours are experienced through chemesthesis
  • As I write this, I realise that there's not really a widely used term for the basic tastes nor for flavours experienced through the olfactory system. That said, the brain does such an amazing job of blending these that there's less of a need to distinguish them, and they combine into the terms flavour and taste. But it's not clear whether chemesthetic experiences are considered part of flavour or something separate and complementary, and I suspect people will disagree on this point. That said, there is a commonality to these, and I'd love to see an enumeration of the range of chemesthetic "flavours" that people regularly enjoy. A lot of modern cuisine seems to be involved in chasing these down, but the language for it doesn't seem to have kept up.
  • chillies, cinnamon, horseradish, Szechuan peppercorn, black pepper, ginger, raw garlic, carbonation in beverages, menthol, alcohol, and the toothpaste effect are clear examples. More subtly (or less distinct from other types of flavour): liquorice, artichoke heart, truffle, tannic astringency, metallic flavour

• A reluctance to change state. Holding on to a moment to avoid the unpleasantness, shock, or energy involved in the transition to a new state
  • There are two possible words here:
    • One is the emotion or phenomenon of the reluctance itself
    • The other is the act of lingering or holding onto the current state out of defiance of the impending/inevitable transition
  • This is a very familiar concept that everyone will recognise, and it is strange to not have a particular word for it. One common example is lingering in the shower because it is warm and pleasant, and the abrupt transition to the activity of drying oneself off and preparing for the day seems unpleasant.
  • It is a much-noted trait of toddlers that they often dislike state change and will sometimes hold onto whatever they are doing to the point of throwing a tantrum, because they don't want it to stop and they don't want to move onto the next activity.
  • One thing I have noticed in myself is a general reluctance to wake up or get out of bed, a general reluctance to go to school or work, a general reluctance to leave school or work, and a general reluctance to go to bed at night. In my years of self-observation, I've often pondered the lack of a term for this phenomenon.
  • Two words I've used a lot in this item are reluctance and linger. Both are sort of adjacent to this phenomenon, but are much broader in use. One can have many reasons for reluctance, and reluctance towards transition/state change itself is not at all implied in the word (in this non-existent word I am thinking of, one's attitude towards the next state itself is not implied at all in the word, and it is just one's attitude towards the transition). And one can linger for many reasons, often because of some hope (e.g., hoping to catch a glimpse of someone).

• Nostalgia, but in relation to something that never existed. I can think of three forms of this, and if there were a term, it would probably end up encompassing all three:
  • Nostalgia for a fictional world
    • E.g., Middle Earth, the world of Conan, steampunk
    • Arguably, the entire genre of Fantasy is an expression of this
  • Nostalgia for a real past that one has not experienced that has been mythologised to the point of fantasy
    • E.g., nostalgia for the Belle Epoque. Or the Renaissance
    • The film Paris at Midnight is largely about this, and about how each era is full of nostalgia for eras that came before it
  • Nostalgia for one's own past, which one has experienced, but has self-mythologised to the point of delusion
    • E.g., nostalgia for a simpler life, or the San Francisco of my childhood

  One could certainly argue that all nostalgia fits this definition and that the term nostalgia is therefore sufficient. But I think it would be linguistically useful to have a term that puts a special focus on the lie — a sense of yearning for something that isn't real, or even a sense of entitlement to something one once had, but in reality never actually had.

• There are often-noted confusions around the word spicy and hot. There is no concise way to indicate that a food item is filled with capsaicin and is going to chemesthetically create a burning sensation in your mouth. If you say that it is hot, it is ambiguous whether it is "spicy hot" or has a very high temperature. If you say that it is spicy, it is unclear whether it specifically has capsaicin, or whether it simply has a lot of spices in it.
  • Because of this ambiguity, most people have settled on spicy to mean "spicy hot", but this has created a new problem, which is that there's no good word for food that has a lot of spices in it. I've sometimes reached for well-spiced or 'has a lot of spices, but whenever I find myself navigating this particular topic, I yearn for a clearer set of words that simply don't exist in English.
  • "Spicy hot" is the most common term I've seen for this, but it is unclear, to say the least
  • Spanish has picante, which works well as a borrowed word. Japanese has 辛い. English actually has piquant, but if you try to use that specifically to mean "spicy hot", you will probably cause confusion unless the context is very clear.
  • Yet another gap in the language is the lack of terms to distinguish specific types of stinging or burning sensations from food that people sometimes find pleasant. Peppercorn, ginger, raw garlic, cinnamon, mustard/horseradish/wasabi, and capsaicin all produce quite distinct effects, and it really feels like each of them could use a distinct term. Whenever I find myself describing these effects in food, or overhear others attempting to do so, it really feels like I (or the other person) has suddenly lost fluency in English, and yet this is such a common topic of conversation.

Terms and distinctions that other languages have and English doesn't, but could, conceivably

A lot of terms that could go in this section are close to the boundary of being a loanword into English. I'm currently going with the approach that if the term exists as an English term in Wiktionary, then I won't include it in the list, unless it's clear that the English term is quite different.

• ser#Spanish vs estar#Spanish — A distinction between to be in a temporary sense versus in a non-temporary sense
  • Soy Americano (I am American — a permanent attribute of me) vs Estoy en Londres (I am in London — a temporary state of me)

  It may be that all things are temporary, but there's an interesting utility in describing the temporary state of things vs. essential attributes when using such a key verb as to be.

  I'm unclear on whether that distinction exists in other languages.

• conocer#Spanish vs saber#Spanish - also: connaître vs savoir and kennen vs weißen

  English seems unusual in conflating knowing a fact vs. knowing a person or place.

• ね#particle (ne) - a particle you can place at the end of a statement/sentence that means something like isn't it?

  Japanese has a bunch of these sentence-ending particles, like よ#particle or か#particle, but Japanese language learners often note how useful -ね is.

  -ね can be used when one is seeking validation. Sometimes it expresses doubt, but other times it's sort of the opposite — asserting that this is something the listener already knows or agrees with. English has many ways to do this, but none of them are concise or ubiquitous, which is what makes -ね so incredibly handy.

  In English, there's a rough equivalent in the term innit, but it's not that widespread and is much more specifically colloquial. The Canadian eh? could be seen as equivalent, also.

• よ#particle (yo) - a particle you can place at the end of a statement/sentence that indicates you are asserting something

  This is often translated as you know, which is woefully inadequate. It's usefulness is less commonly noted than -ね, perhaps because the gap in English is less obvious, but when you get used to using -よ, it quickly becomes clear that English lacks a concise way to indicate that a given statement is to be understood as a matter of fact. -よ indicates that the preceding statement is intended to inform the listener of something. In this sense it is the opposite of -ね, which is intended to indicate that the statement should agree with something the listener already knows.

  Unlike innit or eh?, I can't think of any colloquial English that helps out much here. FYI is the closest I can think of. You know… and just so you know…, but all of these are very different in tone and don't really bear the kind of frequent usage that -よ can sustain.

• schweigen - a simple verb that means to be silent or to say nothing

  It's not that hard to say he said nothing in English, but there's something very nice about the conciseness of the expression er schweigt, and every time I encounter that in German, I'm jealous. It feels a bit weird that there's no verb for this in English — silence can be such a provocative concept, and to attribute to silence to someone as a verb is evocative in a particular way that English simply doesn't allow.

• acompañado - accompanied, but can be used without including what sth is accompanied by

  I saw on a Galician cracker that it could be enjoyed solo or acompañado, and realised that this is a construction you can't use in English. One doesn't say, in English, that something is accompanied without specifying what they are accompanied by. It's interesting that you can say cello solo or unaccompanied minor, but accompanied cello or accompanied minor sound wrong and you never see it. If you want to express something like that, the English language really makes it hard. You pretty much have to say something more elaborate, like "she was accompanied by someone," "you can eat this cracker by itself or with something else," or "you can enjoy this as a standalone item or as part of a set." Etc.

• zoutjes - a brilliant Dutch word for "salty things" or "savoury snacks"

  English definitely lacks a concise word for snacks that specifically refers to salty snacks and excludes things like biscuits or sweetened popcorn. Savoury snacks is about the closet I can come to this, but it's neither concise nor particularly common, and it sounds a bit… picky or pretentious. But "do you have any zoutjes?" is an absolutely brilliant thing to be able to ask.

• 相槌 (aizuchi) - expressions and sounds that a person makes to indicate that they are listening

  Arguably, this could go in one of the other sections below, but the phenomenon of aizuchi isn't really specific to Japanese (though Japanese has a very distinct flavour of it), and even though it has two kanji, it's not really a compound word (i.e., it's not the sum of its parts) and it's in common enough usage.

• 懐かしい (natsukashii)- an expression of nostalgia, an adjective that describes something that you miss or yearn for

  In Japanese, one can walk into a place one has not been in a long time, or look at a photo of something, and simply say 懐かしい. In English, there is no word for this, though there are a range of expressions that cover the emotions: this really brings me back being one of the closer matches. I really miss (this place) also sort of works.

• もったいない (mottainai) - an expression of regret over something being wasted or not being put to good use

  See w:Mottainai

  This has been borrowed to a limited extent in English, particularly in relation to environmentalism and wasted resources. But it has apparently not seen enough usage to warrant an entry at mottainai yet.

• 麻辣 (málà) - the combination of numbing and hot/spicy flavour associated with Szechuan cooking through the combination of chillies and Szechuan peppercorn

  This has been borrowed to an extent in English as a culinary term, but apparently not seen enough usage to warrant an entry at mala yet.

  This is relevant to some interesting gaps in the English language mentioned in the first section, particularly to the notion of chemesthetic flavours and well as around the confusing and confounding terminology around spicy and hot.

Japanese onomatopœia

This deserves its own section. The Japanese language, more than any other I'm aware of, has a wealth of onomatopœia. Or rather, they have a category of words that are like onomatopœia but much broader in scope — they can convey an aural sense of something that might be purely visual, for example ふわふわ, which is word that expresses fluffiness. These onomatopœia are often two syllables repeated (like fuwafuwa or dokidoki), so they have a fairly distinctive sound to them when they are used in a sentence. But not always, there are unrepeated ones like どーん. Some are usually written in katakana, others in hiragana, and many are frequently written in either — there's not really any clear reason to prefer one over the other. To some extent, using katakana emphasises its sense as a sound effect and hiragana emphasises its function as a word.

This phenomenon of words to aurally describe effects that might be sound-related, visual, or even felt, provides a rich language for description that barely exists in English. One place where this occurs a lot and is very useful for expression is in manga, where you can pair these words with illustration — think of the use of POW! and BAM!!! in old-school comic books, or in the 1966 Batman film.

There are a few of these that are worth special mention, at least for me:

• ぽい - this is the sound effect of throwing something away. Can be throwing a crumpled paper into a wastebasket, but it could work metaphorically — deleting a file, or ejecting a person from a moving car. It can provide a sense of carelessness (carelessly discarding a piece of paper) or its opposite: a sense of forceful, intentional ejection. It is an amazing word
• ねばねば - wiktionary lists this as sticky, but I tend to think of it as mucilaginous, because in Japanese there is a category of ねばねば foods that includes natto, okra, nagaimo, nameko, etc. In this sense, ねばねば isn't quite translatable, and usually gets inadequately translated as slimy, sticky, and mucilaginous, none of which quite convey the specific texture (much less the role it plays in Japanese food and other cuisines)
• キラキラ - this is the "sound" (there's no good word I can use here, another gap) of light glistening off of something, such as harsh sunlight glistening off of water. Or it can be something glistening or twinkling, like a star, or a bright light in the distance, where the atmosphere causes it to flicker a bit
• どーん - similar to the word boom, this conveys a sense of an explosion, but it can also convey a simultaneous sense of largeness and suddenness, such as someone slamming an enormous tray of food down on a table

Terms that are specific to some cultural concept

These terms are a bit different from the ones above, as they are tied to some cultural construct. It is not that English is missing a word, in these cases, it is missing the whole idea that the word relates to. Although, in each case, these words and concepts also exhibit a degree of intentional exceptionalism that languages/cultures use protect their identity.

• w:saudade
• w:wabi-sabi
• w:mono no aware
• w:Sehnsucht
• w:Hygge

Compound words (sample)

These a selection of what is doubtless an endless list of cool (but usually not particularly common) compound words that other languages have that English doesn't. In theory, the ones that have wiktionary entries as borrowed words shouldn't show up here (e.g., shinrinyoku and Weltschmerz), but in some cases I couldn't resist.

• Backpfeifengesicht - usually translated as a face in need of a punch or somesuch
• ありがた迷惑 (arigatameiwaku) - often translated as unwelcome favour, but this literally refers to the nuisance of having to thank someone for doing a favour you didn't want them to do
• 積ん読 (tsundoku) - the act of leaving a book unread after buying it. And by association, the pile of unread books one accumulates
  • this comes from a pun: tsunde oku (to leave piled up) contracts to tsundoku (積んどく), but doku' can also be 読, the word for reading
  • Antilibrary is a fairly equivalent English neologism that I've begun using
• 森林浴 (shinrinyoku) - "forest bathing" - the act of clearing one's mind by walking through a forest as a form of nature therapy
  • like 積ん読 and others, this word often shows up on lists of great Japanese words that don't exist in other languages
  • it is a modern construct, coined by the head of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, Tomohide Akiyama, in 1982.
• Weltschmerz - "world pain" — the feeling experienced by an individual who believes that reality can never satisfy the expectations of the mind
  • see w:Weltschmerz
  • coined by the German Romantic author Jean Paul in his 1827 novel Selina
• nasskalt (I learned it as naßkalt, but apparently it was changed in 1996) — cold and wet. So beautiful to have a single, simple word for this. dank comes close, but it tends to describe places like cellars and caves, and when it is used to describe weather, the focus is on the wetness — none of the dictionary definitions I've found mention the cold, which is an essential part of nasskalt.

General untranslatable terms (sample)

These are terms that exist in other languages that often fill a variety of functions and are generally untranslatable — either they are ignored, or they require a more specific form in translation. There are too many of these to ponder, so this list is just intended as a sample.

• doch - sometimes translated as but or on the contrary, it can cover a range of uses, usually indicating some sort of contrast. Often in translation it is simply left out (i.e., translated the same as it would if the word weren't there)
• ちょっと - as a modifier, this is easily translated as a little or just a bit, etc., but as a statement on its own, it has all kinds of implications and is not generally translatable. It essentially allows the speaker to trail off and leave the rest unsaid