What Does the Russian Word Poshlost Really Mean?

[Vanadium 50]

"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

 

[LCSphysicist]

Gambiarra, a brazillian portuguese word XD. About its meaning... Just see the images below that maybe you will understand rs

It is like to solve a problem, but, not really by the right way, using the only materials we have at the moment rs.

 

[Keith_McClary]

Gambiarra, a brazillian portuguese word XD. About its meaning... Just see the images below that maybe you will understand rs

It is like to solve a problem, but, not really by the right way, using the only materials we have at the moment rs.

https://www.google.com/search?q=redneck+repairs&tbm=isch

 

[BillTre]

Would that be like MacGyvering?

When one "MacGyvers" a solution to a problem, one finds a simple yet elegant solution using existing resources. This is in contrast to a kludge, or a Rube Goldberg, which is generally complicated and problematic.

 

[strangerep]

In the late 1990's, I worked as an ex-pat S/W contractor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although English is widely spoken there, I made an effort every day to learn at least one or two new words of Malay/Indonesian (they call it just "Bahasa").

Some of my fellow expats were rather arrogant and dismissive of Bahasa compared to English, citing the way it uses a double-word to express plural. Then one day I became aware that of the words "kita" and "kami" translate (naively) to "we". I asked a Malaysian colleague to explain the distinction, and he actually had to go away for a little while to think about it, then returned with an explanation.

Are there any PF Malaysian/Indonesian speakers reading this? If so, how would you explain the distinction to an ignorant English-only speaker? (No googling allowed!)

[I'll leave the real point of this post to a subsequent episode...]

 

[fresh_42]

Somehow reminds me of ...

The Russian Space Station Mir endured 15 years in orbit, three times its planned lifetime.

https://history.nasa.gov/SP-4225/mir/mir.htm

 

[Vanadium 50]

Gambiarra, a brazillian portuguese word

The French word for that is "bricolage".

 

[Rive]

Sorry to kill that

Well, just got some nominates for 'untranslatable' words.

The first one mentioned is 'káröröm'. Too bad, I think 'gloat' would cover it, at least within the usual range of error related to translations. it's kind of like the 'schadenfreude' above: having fun on somebody else's harm.

The next one is far better: 'tenyérbemászó': 'climbing into palm', more or less. It's often used regarding someone's face: when the other is so irritating that his face is asking for your palm/for a slap... I could not find a fitting word or phrase, maybe somebody else can kill it?

The third is 'pihentagyú'. 'Bored/rested brained', maybe. It's about the mindset producing painful (but not necessarily faulty!) ideas.

Ps.: ooops, just noticed something: these (as most of out suspected untranslatables) are composite words. We are easy to produce these, so I guess it's abolutely legit to translate them as phrases instead of words.

 

[fresh_42]

... are composite words. We are easy to produce these ...

This is the understatement of the day!

folyamatellenőrzésiügyosztályvezetőhelyettesképesítésvizsgálat​

 

[Rive]

This is the understatement of the day!

folyamatellenőrzésiügyosztályvezetőhelyettesképesítésvizsgálat​

I see absolutely no problem with that.
... exactly that's why it can be called easy

 

[Hornbein]

Isn't it strange that the English word "must" has no past tense. We have to resort to "had to."

Indonesian has some useful words missing from English. Rindu is "longing for the absent beloved." Kena means "to be struck adversely." The English equivalent is "negative impact," which physicists should surely disdain.

In Indonesian any word can be turned into a noun, verb, adjective, or abstract noun by using prefixes and suffixes so there are many words that are not present in English. The Bali town of Penestanan uses a prefix and two suffixes to mean "the place of practitioners of black magic." Menyenangkan means "that which causes to become happy." You could translate it as "happyifying." A terlaluan is "a thing that is too much."

Indonesian has no curse words. They do it in English. It is a major insult to say someone is "kurang ajar," which means "has less learning."

But what of something truly untranslateable? I don't know Japanese, having refused to learn it because the language is a huge kludge. It is so ambiguous that the same utterance can have dozens if not hundreds of meanings. I've read that this is a popular game. I suppose it would be possible to take a sentence and enumerate each of the many possible meanings of each word and let the reader puzzle it out, but I have yet to see this done. I also suspect that there is a lot of emphasis on the appearance of the Chinese characters. There's no distinction between poetry and caligraphy. Some bland talk may look nice. Or a sort of punning in that a character looks like some other that sounds completely different. So a literal translation misses pretty much everything, leaving the reader with "this is supposed to be poetry?" feeling. Maybe all this is translatable in a sense, but the result would be so verbose no one ever seems to bother to do it. Though all this is more or less guessing on my part.

 

[sbrothy]

In Russian there is a word that is very hard to translate in English. Vladimir Nabokov believed that there is no English equivalent. This word is пошлость (pronounces poshlost). Very approximately speaking, this word expresses a negative esthetic estimate of something which claims to be exalted while actually it is banal and routinely. It is just one aspect of this concept.
For example, if you watch TV and encounter a legend about King Arthur in a tooth brush advertising.
This is poshlost as well:
Let's collect here untranslatable words from different languages. (With explanation surely:)

There are a lot of words and expressions without a direct equivalent in English/Danish. Especially some of the short everyday words like "meh", "feh", and "welp". I have a hard time finding their equivalents in Danish. Most of them have pretty much just been added directly to or vocabulary.

Regards.

 

[Hornbein]

In the late 1990's, I worked as an ex-pat S/W contractor in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Although English is widely spoken there, I made an effort every day to learn at least one or two new words of Malay/Indonesian (they call it just "Bahasa").

Some of my fellow expats were rather arrogant and dismissive of Bahasa compared to English, citing the way it uses a double-word to express plural. Then one day I became aware that of the words "kita" and "kami" translate (naively) to "we". I asked a Malaysian colleague to explain the distinction, and he actually had to go away for a little while to think about it, then returned with an explanation.

Are there any PF Malaysian/Indonesian speakers reading this? If so, how would you explain the distinction to an ignorant English-only speaker? (No googling allowed!)

[I'll leave the real point of this post to a subsequent episode...]

I'm no longer sure, but I'd say "kita" means "everyone here" while "kami" means "our group."

Indonesian is the traditional language of Medan, across the straight from Malaysia, so it's about 90% the same. There are a fair number of native Malaysians who cannot speak that language. The common language is actually English.

 

[symbolipoint]

There are a lot of words and expressions without a direct equivalent in English/Danish. Especially some of the short everyday words like "meh", "feh", and "welp". I have a hard time finding their equivalents in Danish. Most of them have pretty much just been added directly to or vocabulary.

Regards.

Upon trying to think about those, my only feeling is that those are not words. They are utterances, or sounds someone may make to show but not state a reaction.

 

[strangerep]

I'm no longer sure, but I'd say "kita" means "everyone here" while "kami" means "our group."

Yes, that's essentially how it was explained to me. I found it enlightening (and a bit humbling) that this language, which plenty of ignorant expats scorn, can in fact express concepts for which there is no direct (single word) representation in English.

Indonesian is the traditional language of Medan, across the straight from Malaysia, so it's about 90% the same. There are a fair number of native Malaysians who cannot speak that language. The common language is actually English.

Certainly English is widely spoken, but I wouldn't have said it is the "common" language of Malaysia.

 

[Rive]

They are utterances, or sounds someone may make to show but not state a reaction.

The fun part is, that they are still expected to be translated - and sometimes that's harder than translate just the words.

A side note on this line: I don't think that cartoons and comics (and their counterparts around the world) are high art, but to translate them still is

 

[BillTre]

Yes, that's essentially how it was explained to me. I found it enlightening (and a bit humbling) that this language, which plenty of ignorant expats scorn, can in fact express concepts for which there is no direct (single word) representation in English.

I found this to be an interesting comment.
I would guess that this kind of situation (not having a single word with equivalent meanings in both languages), could be found, going both ways between most languages. (Of course, "equivalent" would require defining.)

In common usage, there is probably an upper limit to the numbers of words in a language (based on an assumption of an upper limit to the number of words a person could usefully remember).
This would limit the number of different concepts that could be linked to a single word.

Science (I would expect, as a communication heavy, cultural sub-group, that uses a lot of detailed terms with intricate meanings) has a large number of words not in common use in English (as a language example).
These science specific words would be words of English language science jargon.
Using a specialized sets of words, meaningful to only a subset of the English speaking population.
However, the meanings of the science words are often equally usable in other languages (presumabbly because their meaning would be novel to almost any language and a word (which is already available) would be needed to go with the meaning), in their science jargon (shared to some extent with English).
A backdoor for knowledge transfer.

This kind of fracturing of language might be expected where the number of meanings needing words is expanding, like within the ever expanding boundaries of science.
Or new things from the intersection of two or more overlapping sub-cultures. (Words are of culture.)
There are now, for example, jargon like sub-divisions within science as a whole. And there are subdivisions within those divisions. Someone it desert ecology could easily use words not understood by a neurochemist or developmental biologist.

I don't know about putting too much emphasis on single words.
If you can string together a bunch of words, to make a super-large single word with a new meaning that can determined by adding up the meanings of the parts, than you can get a lot more useful (understandable) single words in your language.
Not sure if that's better than just a string of words to convey an equivalent meaning (from an language's operational point of view).

 

[Hornbein]

Yes, that's essentially how it was explained to me. I found it enlightening (and a bit humbling) that this language, which plenty of ignorant expats scorn, can in fact express concepts for which there is no direct (single word) representation in English.

I have found Ubud expats, as "liberal" a bunch as you might care to find, more often than not look down on the Balinese. I recall "they can't think abstractly," which is just nonsense. Or saying that Indonesian "has no grammar."

I quite like Indonesian, it is the easiest language in the world for a Westerner to learn. There are almost no irregularities. Much of that is because the written form is only 70 years old. The written language has yet to diverge from spoken. Perhaps any peculiarities are removed when it is taught.

I'd say that the expressivity of Indonesian and English is about the same.

If you are curious, the linguists tell me the languages of Papua are the most difficult. Hungarian and Finnish are essentially central Asian so those are challenging.

Certainly English is widely spoken, but I wouldn't have said it is the "common" language of Malaysia.

I have been to restaurants in shopping malls where tourists never go and the menus were in English.

 

[Hornbein]

I don't know about putting too much emphasis on single words.
If you can string together a bunch of words, to make a super-large single word with a new meaning that can determined by adding up the meanings of the parts, than you can get a lot more useful (understandable) single words in your language.
Not sure if that's better than just a string of words to convey an equivalent meaning (from an language's operational point of view).

Yes I think it really doesn't make any difference if I have to use one word or four. It's just a fun sort of game to point out useful words that are missing from certain languages.

If something really is untranslatable to English, how could we discuss it?

 

[Hornbein]

Languages differ in how useful they are for singing. In my experience Xhosa is the most sonorous and beautiful when sung. Japanese isn't much use for that, so much so that a composer there invented the language of Hymmnos whose only purpose is to be sung. Japanese is great for punk rock. I quite like Tamil rap. German is ideal for comedy.

 

[sbrothy]

Upon trying to think about those, my only feeling is that those are not words. They are utterances, or sounds someone may make to show but not state a reaction.

Point taken. What about "welp" then?

 

[symbolipoint]

Point taken. What about "welp" then?

Let a linguist answer this one. I am unsure. My guess is if someone is saying "welp" very consciously, it is the same as a conversation filler, "well" and including the "p" from "help", as suggesting the other person continue filling or feed the conversation.

 

[Bystander]

Point taken. What about "welp" then?

"Well, Whelp/Pup/Youngster/Rookie?"

 

[sbrothy]

"Well, Whelp/Pup/Youngster/Rookie?"

I came across this word reading an old Peter Bagge comic. "Buddy Does Seattle" I think it was...

welp

Initially I thought it was an error but he's quite fond of it so it occurs throughout his comics. It was new to me but I'm guessing it's an expression predominantly used in daily speech?

 

[DaveC426913]

schweigen (German), which means being silent, but not nearly as passive as the English translation suggests. It is a kind of an active silence, a decision rather than a state.

reticent/reserved? - inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech.

 

[DaveC426913]

"Arigata meiwaku" (Japanese): 'Misplaced kindness' or 'unwelcome kindness'. I remember this one described as when someone does you an unwelcome favor which misfired, causing harm. In Swedish we have a word with roughly the same meaning, "björntjänst" (which roughly means "bear favor"):

Since both those terms are not single words, I'll take that as license for an English "term" of multiple words:

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions."

 

[fresh_42]

reticent/reserved? - inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech.

This is again passive, a part of a person's character. But even extrovert people can schweigen. It is the decision to remain silent instead of breaking the silence with small talk. It is literally an active verb in German. And to te best of my knowledge, there isn't an adequate English active verb.

 

[fresh_42]

By the way: What is the opposite of luck?

The dictionary gave me bad luck (two words), misfortune (too global and pathetic), infelicity (even more pathetic). I guess I could add "Pech" to the untranslatable words. It means the kind of bad luck you have on an everyday level: stumbling, in a lottery, someone detected your hidden intentions, etc.

And it allows the funny German abbreviation PP, persönliches Pech = personal bad luck.

 

[sbrothy]

Speaking of "untranslatable"... I'm from Denmark. A part of our national narrative (aimed at tourists, I'm sure) is that the word "hygge" (cozying? Having innocent family-oriented fun?) is unique to Denmark. This is ofcourse ludicrous as I'm sure people in other countries know how to "let the coziness rip".

There's a (very) tiny kernel of truth though as the word "hygge" can be used as both a verb, adjective, and with a little bending, a noun. Still, it always struck me as downright arrogant to imply that having a nice time with your friends and family is somehow unique to Denmark.

 

[fresh_42]

Speaking of "untranslatable"... I'm from Denmark. A part of our national narrative (aimed at tourists, I'm sure) is that the word "hygge" (cozying? Having innocent family-oriented fun?) is unique to Denmark. This is ofcourse ludicrous as I'm sure people in other countries know how to "let the coziness rip".

There's a (very) tiny kernel of truth though as the word "hygge" can be used as both a verb, adjective, and with a little bending, a noun. Still, it always struck me as downright arrogant to imply that having a nice time with your friends and family is somehow unique to Denmark.

I could have bet it was Lego, not hygge.

 

[Hornbein]

reticent/reserved? - inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech.

Reticent is only for people. Schweigen can apply to anything.

 

[Hornbein]

This is again passive, a part of a person's character. But even extrovert people can schweigen. It is the decision to remain silent instead of breaking the silence with small talk. It is literally an active verb in German. And to te best of my knowledge, there isn't an adequate English active verb.

Silence can be either active or passive. Silence! is something the Bad Guy is inclined to command.

 

[fresh_42]

Schweigen can apply to anything.

This is wrong. Schweigen can only somebody who could otherwise speak, ergo persons. The noun das Schweigen means the silence, but I was explicitly talking about the verb.

 

[fresh_42]

Silence can be either active or passive. Silence! is something the Bad Guy is inclined to command.

Wrong again. Silence is a noun, the command would be "Be silent", which is passive.

 

[Hornbein]

Wrong again. Silence is a noun, the command would be "Be silent", which is passive.

Well I guess when the Bad Guy guy with the armed guards shouts "Silence!" I should respond, "Such improper English. Sire."