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Message board > English isn īt such a big language after all! ; )
English isn īt such a big language after all! ; )
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colibrita
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English isn īt such a big language after all! ; )
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Hi All,
Do you ever come across words in another language, perhaps yours, that don īt exist in English (yet...)?
The Germans have the word "Geisterfahrer" which literally means ghost driver. It refers to someone driving the wrong way down the motorway (could be because they īre drunk, they got distracted, or they īre literally suicidal). "Ghost driver" is in the Urban Dictionary but it īs definitely not commonplace yet. Seems a very useful word to me...
Hugs
Colibrita
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18 Feb 2011
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lshorton99
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I love the Spanish word īganas � - most ex-pats I know living in Spain use it regularly in English sentences. It īs translates roughly as the desire to do something or be in the mood for something. I might reply to an invitation with īI haven īt got the ganas to do that tonight. � In English we would say īI don īt feel like doing that tonight � but I much prefer the Spanish!
Lindsey
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18 Feb 2011
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almaz
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Fascinating subject, Colibrita!
Actually, English is a big - and a generous - language although, or even because, it īs virtually impossible to measure. If a foreign word fulfills a need, it īs adopted despite the peeves of the īpurists �. Then again, if it īs no longer useful, it will usually be relegated to the back of the stage (perhaps to be revived when needed again). Compare �ombudsman � with �glasnost �, for example.
Like Lindsey (and probably yourself), I have a tendency to litter my English with Spanish or, especially, Catalan words and terms which cover specific conditions here. I particularly like using �guiri � for myself and fellow expats of all nations - without the pejorative connotations of course.
By the way, if I met someone driving down the motorway the wrong way, īghostdriver � would be the last description I would use...
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18 Feb 2011
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black Inez
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in portuguese there is a word saudade that means to miss someone so much that your heart hurts and the other one-carinho-that means touching and cuddling and love and all the good feelings you can name...they both donīt exist in english.
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18 Feb 2011
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Catalina Sorina
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In Romanian we have a word which means very much the same as the Portuguese "saudade", which Inez has mentioned, but our word is "dor". |
18 Feb 2011
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coyote.chus
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But.... also English language is so rich and creative when inventing new words. The other day I read in an article "The haves and the have-nots" when referring to the rich or the people who have money and the poor or those who haven īt got any.
Don īt worry, if the word doesn īt exist in English, they will invent it for sure.
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18 Feb 2011
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Bruna Dutra
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"No language has more synonyms than English." This is a fun fact I always share with my students, to remind them that the probability of having a word similar to Portuguese (our mother tongue) is big, and therefore, the act of communicating (getting the message through), even when you don īt know something in English, is easier than in other languages. It helps them realise that they don īt need to keep only memorising vocabulary, but they need to express themselves the way they can when trying to speak. This other day in class a student came up with the word "signification" (similar to ours) instead of "meaning", I already knew it existed, but the student didn īt... it was the perfect example of how great to be learned English is. I think.
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18 Feb 2011
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