Words with No English Equivalents 💭 Words carve up the world into digestible pieces, rendering it comprehensible — they allow us to cognitively engage with these pieces: to create mental representations, and to articulate and discuss them. ‘Untranslatable’ word alerts us to something in the world that English speaking cultures might not have noticed or analyzed with much detail, but which another culture has picked up on. However, here we see the value of English – indeed all languages – being a melting pot: it is able to embrace and absorb these words along with their nuances. As the English lexicon becomes richer and more complex, our understanding and experience of the world is enriched and deepened — for example, the intellectual leaps that English speaking cultures achieved upon encountering the Arabic notion of zero. While they lack exact English equivalents, they can usually be conveyed in a few words or sentences that describe the existence of phenomena that have been overlooked or undervalued by English-speaking cultures. - @musterfuck ✍🏽 @blackcactusx 🌵 @black____cactus 🌵 @detactives 🗞