In Sweden, mangata is the word for the roadlike reflection the moon casts on the water. In Finland there’s a word for the distance reindeer can travel comfortably before taking a break: poronkusema. A terrific German word that people familiar with Concord, Massachusetts, will appreciate is Waldeinsamkeit. What do you think it means? Yep. “A feeling of solitude, being alone in the woods and a connectedness to nature.”
National Public Radio staff say: “Just as good writing demands brevity, so, too, does spoken language. Sentences and phrases get whittled down over time. One result: single words that are packed with meaning, words that are so succinct and detailed in what they connote in one language that they may have no corresponding word in another language.
“Such words aroused the curiosity of the folks at a website called Maptia, which aims to encourage people to tell stories about places.
” ‘We wanted to know how they used their language to tell their stories,’ Maptia co-founder and CEO Dorothy Sanders tells All Things Considered host Robert Siegel.
“So they asked people across the globe to give them examples of words that didn’t translate easily to English.”
I loved this report. You will, too. Read more at NPR, here.
Art: National Public Radio, “All Things Considered”
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