Untranslatable Words (Part 2)
Here are parts 1 and 3. I have also made other posts featuring untranslatable German and Spanish words.
Cook Islands Māori: papakata (having one leg shorter than the other)
Czech: prozvonit (to call a cellphone just long enough to make it ring once, so the other person calls back and the caller doesn't spend money on minutes)
Finnish: tokka (a large herd, especially of reindeer)
French: rire dans sa barbe (literally “to laugh in one’s beard,” to laugh quietly while thinking about something that happened in the past)
German: Schilderwald (literally “forest of signs,” a street crowded with so many road signs that you become lost)
Hindi: चाय-पानी [chaay-paanee] (literally “tea and water”, money given to someone, often a bureaucratic worker, to get things done)
Inuktitut: ᐃᒃᑦᓱᐊᕐᐳᒃ [iktsuarpuk] (the frustration of waiting for someone to show up)
Italian: culaccino (the mark left on a table by a wet glass), gattara (a woman, often elderly and lonely, who devotes herself to stray cats)
Japanese: 哀れ [aware] (the bittersweetness of a brief and fleeting moment of transcendent beauty), 木漏れ日 [komorebi] (the sort of scattered, dappled light effect that occurs when sunlight shines in through trees), 教育ママ [kyōiku mama] (a mother who pushes her children to excel academically), 積ん読 [tsundoku] (the act of buying books and leaving them unread, typically piling them up with other unread books), 侘寂 [wabi-sabi] (accepting the natural cycle of growth and decay)
Korean: 원 [won] (the reluctance on a person’s part to let go of an illusion)
Kwangali: hanyauku (the act of walking on tiptoes across warm sand)
Luba-Kasai: ilunga (a person who forgives abuse the first time, tolerates it the second time, but never the third)
Rapa Nui: tingo (to gradually steal all of a neighbor's possessions by borrowing them and not returning them)
Russian: почемучка [pochemuchka] (a person who asks a lot of questions)
Swedish: gökotta (to wake up early in the morning with the purpose of going outside to hear the first birds sing)
Yagan: mamihlapinatapei (a wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who both want to initiate something, but neither wants to start)
Yiddish: שלימזל [shlimazl] (a chronically unlucky person)