These words, past their initial intrigue, offer us a looking glass into specific cultures. After all, for a culture to come up with a word, something must happen often enough. And for it not to exist in other cultures, it must not have passed that intangible threshold. This very concept means that with untranslatables, we very likely experiencing a... See more

In learning about untranslatable words, we are getting to explore new worlds and through introspection, a window into ours and other people’s underlying “wiring”. We are not just loosely learning about trivial terms, but in certain cases, a lot about ourselves.

“Duende” and “saudade” are kin. Both insist that anguish and ecstasy are not opposites but accomplices, that beauty doesn’t arrive without a wound. Lorca knew it.

In Romanian there’s a word that sits in the same constellation: “dor”. It has no true translation, a combination of longing, love, grief, but mostly that unbearable sweetness of absence... See more