Re: Untranslatable words
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, June 24, 2004, 5:04 |
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On Wednesday, June 23, 2004, at 05:00 , Peter Bleackley wrote:
[snip]
> The most untranslatable words from other languages
[snip]
> altahmam Arabic for a kind of deep sadness
> gezellig Dutch for cozy
> saudade Portuguese for a certain type of longing
Welsh:
_hiraeth_ both an expectant longing for what is to come & a nostalgia for
what is past and gone.
_hwyl_ /hujl/ - mood, atmosphere, emotion etc. What one may experience
listening to a great orator, being in the Millennium Stadium at Cardiff
when Wales are playing, hearing great music etc, etc.
Neither word has a single English equivalent. Indeed, the two words not
infrequently occur in the _English_ of more or less monoglot English
speakers in Wales.
A not uncommon valediction is: pob hwyl /po:b hujl/ - 'pob' = 'every',
'all'.
Pob hwyl!
Ray
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