73
What's a word or concept in your language that does not translate very well to English? (lemmy.world)
submitted 12 hours ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
66 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Asking non-native English speakers.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 31 points 9 hours ago* (4 children)

Russian is more productive than English, so there's a bunch of "we just smushed a bunch of prefixes and suffixes on it" words that don't have a great English equivalent, like недоперепить -- to drink quite a lot but not succeed at drinking too much. I don't think we properly have листопад which is the equivalent of "snowfall" but for autumn leaves. I really miss успевать -- to successfully have enough time to do something. There's also кипяток -- water that has been boiled but then slightly cooled, like 200-205 degrees F. The canonical examples are тоска , which is a kind of melancholy longing, and авось which expresses optimism but I basically never heard anyone actually say.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago

    As someone who speaks the exact bare minimum amount of Russian to get by in Estonia (so basically hello, please, thank you, fuck you, good bye), there's a couple Russian words of the "not in front of your babushka" type that IMO lose a bit of character when translated to the English phrases that mean the same thing:

    похуй - universal answer whenever someone raises a concern

    хуйня - very versatile word

    I'll let you do the honor of translating them.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago

    I think авось has a general meaning similar to "god willing", or "with some luck", not simply some optimism. Like "авось успеем" -> "with some luck, we can make it in time". I do agree it's an old-fashioned word which I haven't really heard in a while.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent