Gaining Perspective Through Untranslatable Words

Let’s further consider the plausibility that the relationship between language <> thought <> culture is not linear or uni-directional, but instead a virtuous cycle.

I think untranslatable words offer us the opportunity to expand our horizons, through simply learning about and questioning that which we were not previously exposed to.

The invisible Pareto principle is active, where we likely have created words for the twenty percent of possible situations that make up 80% of our collective experience. Once concepts pass a threshold of need, words will naturally be created to fill the void.

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

We often think of language as a means to an end, but rarely take the time to consider whether language in itself is influencing our thoughts, not just enabling the sharing of them.

Allow me to try convincing you that although language is likely not deterministic, it can have an impact on the way you think, the way you learn, the habits you pick up, and the decisions you make﹣especially if we don’t actively try to expand our horizons past that which we’ve been served.

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.

I’ve learned that each of these words offers a window to understand different cultures, which can influence anything from the way you make decisions to the habits you form.