# One of the most frustrating things about learning another language . . . **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 1, 2008, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039 "2008-10-01T18:59:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![sjc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e5b9ba/32.png) [@sjc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sjc)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2008, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/41 "2008-10-03T21:54:54Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > n this case the story itself). > > And why is it an “extreme fault” of my language that you don’t know it well? Either I’m being wooshed or you have a serious problem there. I’m guessing a bit of hyperbole on **Pyper’s** part. Still, while I am not too good with Spanish, “cute” is used in English in a way that conveys a whole range of meaning that probably doesn’t quite line up with any of the proposed translations. That’s not a deficiency at all, just a difference. I’m sure it’s still annoying for an English speaker who is having a conversation in Spanish and can’t find a word to line up to the exact meaning of “cute”. As to the OP, I too like to be aware of the literal meaning of the words, it can help me remember the word and the figurative meaning, and I think that it sometimes (not always) helps me understand how to use the word. As an aside, I’ve found that a knowledge of Shakespeare’s English can help me understand Italian. Some of this is simply having to wrap my mind around alternate meanings for words and phrases, but some of it is apparent correspondences in the way things are phrased or expressed. An example: “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?” “But soft!” means IIRC “Quietly!” or “slowly/carefully”, in Italian you say “Piano!” or “Pian Piano”, which translates to “soft” and has a very similar array of meanings. Another example is the construction “or Charles or something greater masters thee”, nowadays we’d say “either Charles or something greater”, in Italian (and I bet Spanish too) you use the same construction “O Carlo o qualcosa piu’ grande”. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2008, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/42 "2008-10-03T22:18:55Z")
> [@Cisco](#): > > If someone asked me to translate _badass_, I would warn them that it doesn’t translate directly, but I would still try for them. > > I would say bad is negative, but Michael Jackson made a record in the '80s and flipped the meaning around to mean cool or tough. > > Ass is your butt, but in this term it’s just a vulgar modifier. > > So badass means good, cool, or tough. My mother-in-law’s pot roast - totally badass. A terrible, tough cut of meat she uses! And then she leaves it out too long before we eat, so it’s cold! So very, very badass! 😉 ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2008, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/43 "2008-10-03T23:15:46Z")
> [@blinkingblinking](#): > > There are many individual words that cannot be translated. When I was in Japan talking to other English speakers they used the word ‘genki’ in English because there is no good translation. So give me a bad translation, okay? Otherwise, I’ll be wandering around this whole weekend saying "Genki? Genki. Geeeeeenkiiiiiiii . . . . " ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/44 "2008-10-04T00:22:29Z")
> [@phouka](#): > > So give me a bad translation, okay? Otherwise, I’ll be wandering around this whole weekend saying "Genki? Genki. Geeeeeenkiiiiiiii . . . . " I think it’s usually translated as “healthy”, but the common expression “Genki des ka?” is often translated as “How are you?” Yet a genki person isn’t one who is merely in good physical health, but is upbeat and energetic – almost “perky”, but without any of the sarcastic or sexual connotations that word carries in English. What people normally mean when they say a word or expression doesn’t translate is either that the shades of meaning associated with the word do not correspond to any one word in the language it’s being translated to, or that breaking the term down to its root words and translating it “literally” results in something with a totally different meaning. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/45 "2008-10-04T00:48:46Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > What people normally mean when they say a word or expression doesn’t translate is either that the shades of meaning associated with the word do not correspond to any one word in the language it’s being translated to, or that breaking the term down to its root words and translating it “literally” results in something with a totally different meaning. Timed out while editing. Another example from my days as an EFL teacher in Japan is “chikan”. One of the textbooks used for adult classes had a dialogue where this word was mentioned, and my female students always asked me how to say “chikan” in English. I did my best to explain how to express the idea of “chikan” in English, but had to say that it doesn’t really translate – there isn’t any one English word that carries the same meaning. It’s not that the meaning of “chikan” is difficult to explain. It’s a noun that refers to men who grope women on the train or other crowded spaces. I’ve seen it translated as “molester”, but that makes people think “child molester”. “Molester” also fails to convey the idea that the person in question is one who acts in a public space. The closest word I know is the very old-fashioned “masher”, but even that isn’t quite right. An American woman would be likely to call a chikan a creep, jerk, or asshole, but none of those words alone make the nature of his offensive behavior clear. What the characters used to write “chikan” literally mean is, I believe, “stupid man”, but that’s not really a translation either. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/46 "2008-10-04T01:42:21Z")
I also have a language learning style in which for some reason it’s helpful to me to know the word-for-word translation of idioms. It’s much easier for me to remember that _Es tut mir Leid_ means “I’m sorry” when I know it literally means “it does me grief.” Don’t ask why. Actually, the thing that drives me bananas is when I ask if something is right, and the person says, “well, yes,” in a sort of squirmy voice. Sometimes it takes several minutes of probing to determine that what they mean is that it’s _syntactically_ right – all the tenses and genders and such are in the right place – but no native speaker would ever say that. In appropriate situations I tell non-English speakers immediately when what they’re asking about isn’t idiomatic English. (Of course, constantly being told, “Well, yes, it’s grammatical, but we just don’t say it that way” is frustrating enough already, but at least it’s useful.) ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/47 "2008-10-04T03:04:08Z")
To say that a word (or even a phrase) “doesn’t translate” and then stop cold is no good. But there are plenty of words and phrases between languages that can’t be precisely translated, merely explained. Take “anak bawang” in Indonesian. Both words individually translate perfectly: anak = child, bawang = onion. But what the heck is an “onion child”? Well, an “anak bawang” is a younger child who tags along with older kids but is pretty much ignored. I guess you could say a “hanger-on” or a “tag-along” in English, but it just isn’t quite the same. Then there is a phrase like “Si Endah itu, bagaimana?” which I’ll dissect word by word: SI: There is no word perfectly equivalent to “si” in English - the word “who” comes closest in some cases - but it is often used in front of the name of someone you’ve been talking about. ENDAH: a name. ITU: that. BAGAIMANA: means “how” and is often used in spoken Indonesian to ask how someone/something is doing. So the phrase “Si Endah itu, bagaimana?” translates as “That Endah [who we were just talking about], how is she doing?” But word-for-word translation is just gibberish (I guess it would be “word for marking that I’m about to say the name of someone we’ve just been referring to Endah that, how”). So if a professor told me that a word or phrase didn’t translate, I’d be willing to believe it. I’d want an explanation, though. ---
**Author:** ![delphica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e9a140/32.png) [@delphica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/delphica)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/48 "2008-10-04T03:11:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > What the characters used to write “chikan” literally mean is, I believe, “stupid man”, but that’s not really a translation either. In NYC, I think just about everyone (hmmm, maybe every woman at least) would know exactly what you meant if you called such a person a “subway groper,” even if the groping happened somewhere else that was crowded but not a subway. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/49 "2008-10-04T03:16:42Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Timed out while editing. Another example from my days as an EFL teacher in Japan is “chikan”. One of the textbooks used for adult classes had a dialogue where this word was mentioned, and my female students always asked me how to say “chikan” in English. I did my best to explain how to express the idea of “chikan” in English, but had to say that it doesn’t really translate – there isn’t any one English word that carries the same meaning. Sure, but that just means it translates into more than one word… ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/50 "2008-10-04T04:22:12Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > … where was your roomie from, you say? > > The people I know who say “lindo” are all Latin American and everybody from Spain I know says “mono” or, especially, “mona,” a lot. Mind you, I’ve heard Americans call a car “cute,” while the only time I’d call a car “mono” is a New Beetle, in which case it’s sarcastic. I’m talking mostly NE Spain: Euskadi, Rioja, Navarra, Aragon, Catalonia, with a dose of Madrid thrown in. I hear it on Madrid-based TV a lot, too. Again, the only time I hear “lindo” on TV it’s in _culebrones_. > > For a story about your dog, I might say “qué mono” (if the dog is male), “qué mona” (if female) or “qué monada” (if I don’t know the gender and have no idea whether you’d take offense if I mistake it; monada can only refer to an object, in this case the story itself). > > And why is it an “extreme fault” of my language that you don’t know it well? Either I’m being wooshed or you have a serious problem there. I lived in Granada, and all my roommates were from the south. I am aware there are _big_ differences in vocabulary just within the nation of Spain. I once held up a spatula-like implement and asked my three roommates what it was called. Each of them, from Sevilla, Jaen, and Murcia, gave a different answer. Yes, that was sarcasm/hyperbole. Also, my “extreme fault” joke was referring the lack of appropriate equivalent to “silly,” not the lack of equivalent to “cute,” which you addressed. I suggested “bobo/a” as the equivalent to “silly.” Perhaps you can weigh in? ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/51 "2008-10-04T05:02:53Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > Sure, but that just means it translates into more than one word… I guess that depends on what you mean by “translate”. The German word “wiedersehen” (as in “Auf Wiedersehen”) is literally “again see”, or “to see again”. So that’s a case of one word translating as more than one word. But “wiedersehen” is a compound word, with “wieder” on its own meaning “again” and “sehen” “to see”. It doesn’t require any interpretation to translate “wiedersehen” as “to see again”, that’s exactly what the components of the word mean in English. “Wiedersehen” does suggest the meaning “to meet again” rather than just “to look at again”, but the word “see” carries that same connotation in English (“See you later!”) so the translation is a pretty tidy one. The Japanese word “chikan” could likewise be translated as two English words, “stupid man”. That’s what the two characters used to write the word literally mean. But “chikan” isn’t used to mean “a man who is unintelligent or foolish”, it’s used to mean “a man who takes advantage of crowded commuter trains to grope women”. But is that phrase a _translation_ of the word “chikan”, or an explanation/definition? It seems that this sort of phrase is just the sort of thing the OP _doesn’t_ want to hear when he asks for a translation, he’d rather be told that “chikan” is literally “stupid man”. But that isn’t actually what the word means, so I think many Japanese speakers would be reluctant to say that’s the translation. The OP might be better off not phrasing his questions as a request for translation, which suggests that the original meaning will be conveyed rather than the etymology. Something like “What do the different parts mean on their own?” might work instead. It may be that the instructor is afraid of confusing students with the literal meaning of each word in an idiom, though. Keep in mind that there are some cases where a word can’t be translated because it plays a grammatical role with no English equivalent (like **Kyla** ’s example of the Hebrew “et”) or refers to some native object or concept that is not found in other places or cultures. This happens with food for instance, or local wildlife. If I were trying to translate “cat” for aliens from a planet where cats were unknown, I don’t think I could do any better than just describing a cat’s appearance and behavior in their language. If they don’t have cats they won’t have a local word to refer to that animal, and the English word “cat” doesn’t have any literal meaning other than just the name for the animal. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/52 "2008-10-04T06:00:36Z")
> [@KarlGrenze](#): > > Weird, in that song, I always took the other meanings of “doblar” (as in bend, turn around). “Solo tú doblas mi razón y por eso a donde tú quieras voy”… Only you bend my reason (to fit yours) and that’s why I go wherever you want to go. It seems to fit better the whole “I only trust you, I have complete faith in you” theme of the song. > > [Link to the song, may have pop ups.](http://www.letrasymas.com/letra.php?p=shakira-no-creo) > > Refer to RAE (www.rae.es), [try this link](http://buscon.rae.es/draeI/SrvltConsulta?TIPO_BUS=3&LEMA=doblar), definitions 5, 6, and 7 for doblar. Brilliant! I never thought of it that way. _¡Que tontería!_ ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/53 "2008-10-04T07:34:58Z")
Word! My preferred method of learning is the transliteration method - first sentence in the original language, second translated literally, third translated generally. I must have asked every Spanish speaking person I know what “se” means, a word I have seen in a lot of sentences in real life texts, but hadn’t gotten to it in my studies yet. All of them looked at me with bug eyes. But when I found out on my own, it seemed pretty simple. It basically means “was” or “is” as used before a verb, making it reflexive. Like “the dog is bathed” would used “se” but “he bathes the dog” would not. But this isn’t limited to learning languages. Often I’ll ask someone something and they’ll hem and haw or start a 5 minute explanation. After which I’ll say “so the answer is X?” With “X” being two or three words that would’ve served as a satisfactory answer to my question. I remember in high school my friend was trying to explain calculus to me a year or two before I was scheduled to take it because I was curious what it was for. And he’s going all into derivations and formulas and blah blah blah. And I didn’t get it. Then I took calculus and I remember thinking, “he should have just told me that calculus is how you figure out the slope”. > [@Cisco](#): > > Thank you! I’m not sure about this teacher yet, but I did drop a Spanish teacher once for telling us that “adios” has nothing to do with God. I hadn’t heard that. I know that “a dios” means “to God” and “adios” means “goodbye” but I had no idea they had some sort of common linguistic origin. What’s the scoop on that? Interestingly, when I first heard Juanes’ song “A Dios Le Pido” (To God I Pray) I thought he was singing “Adios Libido” (Goodbye Sex Drive). :smack: > [@Usram](#): > > French _que_ can translate as approximately that, than, only, when, if, whether, to, for, may, depending on context. It can also be used when normal word order is reversed, and to repeat a conjunction. There’s no English equivalent. Each context (or most of them) has an English equivalent though. That’s like saying that “meat” has no direct translation because “meet” is pronounced the same way and there’s no word in the other language that means both these things. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/54 "2008-10-04T14:10:58Z")
> [@Pyper](#): > > I lived in Granada, and all my roommates were from the south. I am aware there are _big_ differences in vocabulary just within the nation of Spain. I once held up a spatula-like implement and asked my three roommates what it was called. Each of them, from Sevilla, Jaen, and Murcia, gave a different answer. Oh, you mean a [spatula](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hl=en&q=spatula&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2)? Or a [pancake turner](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=pancake%20turner&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)? Or a [pancake flipper](http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=pancake+flipper&btnG=Search+Images)? Or did you mean a [spatula](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=rubber%20spatula&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)? Or a [rubber scraper](http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=rubber+scraper&btnG=Search+Images)? Or maybe a [spoonula](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=spoonula&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)? Or, my favorite term, invented by **BlueKangaroo** ’s mother, IIRC: a child cheater? ('Cause if you use a child cheater well, the child is cheated out of the treat of licking out the bowl! Isn’t that a great name? I move we make that the official name for this tool.) English speakers have room to talk about extensive vocabularies. We have more words in our language than most - lots of them are synonyms, even for simple nouns. Asking a guest for a kitchen implement often devolves into pantomime and reaching for the mental thesaurus, and that’s when we both speak English! ---
**Author:** ![KarlGrenze](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dbc845/32.png) [@KarlGrenze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGrenze)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/55 "2008-10-04T16:11:12Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > I hadn’t heard that. I know that “a dios” means “to God” and “adios” means “goodbye” but I had no idea they had some sort of common linguistic origin. What’s the scoop on that? Interestingly, when I first heard Juanes’ song “A Dios Le Pido” (To God I Pray) I thought he was singing “Adios Libido” (Goodbye Sex Drive). :smack: “Adiós” is short form for “Vaya con Dios” (go with God). “A Dios le…” is “To God I”, in this case “pido”/ “beg”. That is what this native speaker was taught in her native Spanish class every year for 13 years (kinder through 12th). **Olive** , it is Shakira. I like her songs (mainly her older ones), and indeed I have that song in one of my playlists. But I confess I’m a sucker for romantic “fresa” Spanish pop. 😉 From some of her other songs, I get that impression of the word. Now, like **Nava** said, there is the other interpretation, and I admit now that it could be valid. But I still prefer mine! And regarding the dog, I’m more likely to call something that is “cute” or “a cutie”, chulo/a or chulería, respectively. Of course, one has to be a little careful sometimes with chulo, as that also means pimp. ---
**Author:** ![Pyper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Pyper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyper)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/56 "2008-10-04T16:13:10Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > Or did you mean a [spatula](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=rubber%20spatula&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)? Or a [rubber scraper](http://images.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=rubber+scraper&btnG=Search+Images)? Or maybe a [spoonula](http://images.google.com/images?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=s&hl=en&q=spoonula&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi)? Or, my favorite term, invented by **BlueKangaroo** ’s mother, IIRC: a child cheater? ('Cause if you use a child cheater well, the child is cheated out of the treat of licking out the bowl! Isn’t that a great name? I move we make that the official name for this tool.) Excuse me, the proper term for that implement, per my 7th grade home ec teacher, is a “magic wand.” ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/57 "2008-10-04T16:22:02Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > Word! My preferred method of learning is the transliteration method - first sentence in the original language, second translated literally, third translated generally. That’s not transliteration. Transliteration is just writing a word from one language using the writing system of another language. “Yama” is the transliteration of “山” from Japanese, but the translation is “mountain”. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/58 "2008-10-04T17:16:32Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > > [@Usram](#): > > > > French que can translate as approximately that, than, only, when, if, whether, to, for, may, depending on context. It can also be used when normal word order is reversed, and to repeat a conjunction. There’s no English equivalent. > > Each context (or most of them) has an English equivalent though. That’s like saying that “meat” has no direct translation because “meet” is pronounced the same way and there’s no word in the other language that means both these things. Well, that’s a hompohone, which is something slightly different, but I understand your point. You could translate French _que_ to an English word a lot of the time. But not all of the time - there are many French phrases that use _que_ in which you have to reword the entire phrase for it make sense in English. And as with the examples from other languages that people have put forward, _que_ can be used as more of a grammatical marker than a word carrying any meaning itself. That kind of thing is hard to translate into other languages that work differently. It can be done, but it takes a lot more words than the original language. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/59 "2008-10-04T18:54:27Z")
> [@jackdavinci](#): > > I must have asked every Spanish speaking person I know what “se” means, a word I have seen in a lot of sentences in real life texts, but hadn’t gotten to it in my studies yet. All of them looked at me with bug eyes. But when I found out on my own, it seemed pretty simple. It basically means “was” or “is” as used before a verb, making it reflexive. Like “the dog is bathed” would used “se” but “he bathes the dog” would not. How is that reflexive? I would write, “The dog is bathed.” as “El perro esta bañado.” As far as I know, se is a reflexive pronoun and you could say, “El perro se baña.” which would translate as “The dog bathes itself.” ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2008, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039/60 "2008-10-04T19:14:49Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > How is that reflexive? I would write, “The dog is bathed.” as “El perro esta bañado.” As far as I know, se is a reflexive pronoun and you could say, “El perro se baña.” which would translate as “The dog bathes itself.” Maybe I’m getting in over my head here, but I don’t think you would say El perro se baña, because there is no infinitive there. I think it would be El perro bañarse. There is at least one native Spanish speaker here who can correct me if I’m wrong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/one-of-the-most-frustrating-things-about-learning-another-language/466039.md?page=4)