And here’s it’s called a “pager/paging call.”
That’s interesting. Norwegian does - “drosje” - but we use that and taxi interchangeably.
(And I’d argue that the Danish word “hyggelig” - which is also in Norwegian - can be adequately translated with “nice.”)
All right, you’ve got me curious. How do the Chinese reply to simple yes/no questions?
I’ll bet you nobody can find a word for a baby kangaroo in any other language except English.
(It’s a “Joey” BTW)
Perhaps. But I’ll bet you very few languages take very long to say “baby kangaroo” all the same. Who cares if it’s one word or a few?
You repeat the main verb. It goes something like this:
Q: 你吃了飯沒有？(Have you eaten yet?)
A: 吃過了． (Have eaten.) or
A: 還沒有吃. (Have not eaten)
I believe Latin is similar as well.
Sometimes I watch English language movies with Spanish subtitles. Well, very often, the translation is not accurate. They translate something entirely different than what is said. Sometimes very funny.
(Since no-one else has answered you yet) I think this came up on SD before. That answering a direct question with “no” is considered very rude (perhaps in cantonese/madarin the equivalent of “no” is actually something more like “refused” or “incorrect”).
ETA: I see someone that actually knows something about the Chinese has already answered 
Not even in any Australian aboriginal languages? :dubious:
Um, what about esperar?
“Espero por la navidad.”
“I’m looking forward to Christmas.”
Irish too.
That’s how it works in Japanese as well. There are words for yes and no, but you don’t hear them as much as repeating the verb. In fact, translating hai as yes can be misleading sometimes, because one of the acceptable words for saying “I’m listening to you while you talk” is hai. So while you might think the person is agreeing with you, in reality it’s just showing that you’re being understood.
I guess English works like this to a certain extent, in that you can say yes to someone while you listen and not necessarily be agreeing, but you have to think about all the meanings of “yes” before this becomes clear.
Ignorance fought – thank you! In the parts of Mexico where I lived for several years, no one ever came up with this phrase when I tried to explain to them what looking forward to something meant. Espero por…very interesting. May I ask in what part of the Spanish-speaking world you have heard that this is used?
I definitely remember that there were various ways that “hai” was translated in Spirited Away. While I am not aware of much Japanese, it was readily apparent what the word meant from context and that there is no set phrase in English that expresses the word that works in every context. However, I don’t think it’s “untranslatable” - it just depends heavily on context.
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It’s fairly standard that there is no specific word for “yes” in Latin, and is the reason why Romance languages have such varied words for it. “Oui” comes from “ille” (that), I’m assuming through a process similar to how “grenouille” came to be pronounced. To me at least, those words rhyme or are very close. Spanish “Si” comes from “sic” (thus). Occitan is named after its word for yes, “oc” which is derived from “hoc” (this). Thus apparently the fashion was in Latin to use one of those words to indicate agreement, and it caught on differently in different areas. The fact that a word for “yes” doesn’t exist in other languages too makes me feel as though the existence of the word “yes” is not nearly as fundamental to a language as it feels to us.
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In general, languages generally will not have words for flora and fauna completely unlike those in the area the language developed, and will have to either use the local words or use some sort of long descriptions. Potatoes being called “pomme de terre” in French has always greatly amused me. I also recall that French has the word for “rat” in its word for “bat” (the flying mammal), and Google tells me it’s “chauve-souris” or “bald rat”; is it just a coincidence that the English words rhyme?
The concept of “fair” noted by Northern Piper is something I was going to chime in with. This is a word whose meaning is so derived from culture that absent the culture it is extremely hard to explain. Why was it “unfair” of Greg Chappell to instruct his bowler to bowl underarm in the last ball of the game when underarm bowling was quite legal? (If you don’t understand this cricket reference, ask any New Zealander. And enjoy the subsequent tirade.)
Moving on, my suggestion of a word that is not translatable without enormous explanation and glossing - “truthiness”.
The whole thread about women being “the fairer sex” is just full of linguistic minefields. Fairer meaning paler? More attractive? Versus foul? Winds? What?
Bulgarian doesn’t have words for “privacy” or “cheese”. For “privacy”, you can say “litchno prostranstvo”, which literally means “personal space”, but it doesn’t really convey what privacy really means to me.
There are only two kinds of cheese widely available in Bulgaria, cirene (which is like feta) and kashkaval (a mild yellow cheese). If you want to talk about cheese in general, there isn’t really a good word. I’ve heard “cirene” used for this purpose, but…cheddar isn’t cirene. It doesn’t convey the concept of cheese.
I once tried to explain to my counterpart about “homesickness”. She didn’t get it.
So… no Bulgarian could ever possibly comprehend the subtleties of “The Farmer in the Dell”? The implications this has on relating to certain Presidential Administrations is staggering.
It seems any Western culture would also need a concept of private information, if only to satisfy both Western cultural taboos and Western standards of basic healthcare. (In short, there have to be Bulgarian proctologists.) That is a lot of what privacy means.
Similarly Swedes often struggle and use the word ‘funny’ instead. I have had many an exchange like this:
Do Americans ever use it in the way Brits do: a cowboy job is one that is done very poorly by someone that clearly had no idea what he is doing? A cowboy being someone that would perform such a cowboy job.
That’s fascinating. Thank you.
It also lets me mention a wonderful French word which has no equivalent in English : si.
The French *si *essentially means “Yes, and you’re wrong” all in one word. Not only is it a great word to be terse with, it provides a good answer to questions in the form of “Don’t you like X ?” which in English are a bit confusing semantically. If I answer yes, does it mean I do like X, or that I agree that I don’t ?! Whelp, with si, no ambiguity. “Yes, I like X and thinking I don’t is wrong”.
Children love it too. “Did not !” “Did too !” becomes a string of rapid fire “Non !” “Si !”