This is very common in Chinese. China Guy or others can give you more details.
European languages do this from time to time, but not quite in the manner that English does it, and not as freely. In English, it’s common to use a noun form as an infintive verb – to ski, to saddle, to ice (a cake), to lord (over someone). In Romance languages, for example, these kinds of verbs formed from nouns would require special verbal ending to indicate the indicative form of the verb.
Well, if it’s a Germanic language (as English is), then yes, we do make verbs from nouns and nouns from verbs.
And we import a lot of words from English/American. In Iceland and Norway there is a lot of effort to try and find/invent words to replace the ‘contamination’ of anglisisms. There is a fear that the language will die out if this is left to roam without being kept in check. Of course, languages evolve faster than authorities, so it’s a lost battle to start with. Especially in computer related matters, there’s simply no way to construct new words, when English words can be imported with great success. The relative closeness of, say my native language, and English, makes importing the word easy. I’ve done this comparison on this board before, but it’s fun and I don’t mind repeating. Let’s see the exact same sentence in English and Swedish:
Shall we go to my room?
Skall vi ga till mitt rum?
Even for those who never saw a Swedish word before in their lives, I’m sure the relationship is obvious.
I’d say it’s a combination of bliss and curse. The countries most ‘vulnerable’ to the contamination (Scandinavian countries, Holland), are the countries where television is not dubbed (roughly), and where the population is best at speaking/reading/using English. This gives us an edge internationally, so in many ways, it’s a good thing.
And as for the OP:
Scadenfreude
Skadeglädje
We’re as bad as the Germans. And as we have the word, we didn’t import it.
What about Masochist? Or is that more about causing pain?
Or as we say in Jersey “you sick bastard, what the hell’s wrong with you?!”
Okay it’s not one word but it is ten syllables and if you’ve ever seen any official German document you’ll be treated to words like:
Arbeitsgenehmigungspflichtige (9 syllables)
Hey, what about:
Donaudampfschifffahrtskapitaensmuetzenabzeichen. (13 syllables)
This is: “the pin on the hat of a captain of a steamboat on the Danube.” German can go absolutely nuts with compound words. Oh, and those three "f"s in a row are indeed the correct spelling. Pffffffffft.
parlo americano, masochism is about deriving pleasure from receiving pain. And I’m afraid to say that the word “masochist” was originally coined in the German language, after a Spanish/German writer called Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
I should’ve known. I should’ve payed attention to mike myers, Saturday Night Live , Dieter and his monkey, but no I had to find out for myself… there’s nothing kinkier than germans.
Oh well, English is a hodge-podge, a smorgasbourd, of words Schadenfreude is another.
Absolutely yes. English is a very concise language compared to most. You can see this in just about any bit of translated text - the English is typically the shortest. I used to work in a translation company, and we had set percentages for expansion, ie “English to French, the French will take up 15 percent more space… English to German, the German takes up 25 percent more space” etc. etc.
And I’m afraid to say that good ole’ Leopold has nothing to do with the famous “Sachertorte”. But then again eating a piece of “Sachertorte” is anything but masochistic.
Yes there is. Japanese…
But I do think Germans take the cake for so called “Western Civilization”, with the English probably running a close second.
The search feature of the SDMB is your friend:
Doing a search on “schaden”, I found This thread discussing Bill Bryson’s apparent incompetence in discussing the history of the English language and languages in general. Within this thread, Snoooooopy posts the following:
So I think this most directly responds to the OP.
No, the OP asked whether English has any single words that require multiple word phrases in other languages to convey. So far, Athena is the only one I’ve seen actually suggest an answer. (I skimmed a few of the posts, though.)
RR
The English word “groovy”. I can’t think of a foreign word that captures its precise metaphorical range.
The word that I’ve had the hardest time explaining to foreigners is “cheezy”.
“It’s like when something is earnest, but then it ends up being bad, but then it’s so bad that it, like, y’know, good?”
unblinking foreign stare
No, no, you’re thinking of “corny”.