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Better Than English: Untranslatable Words (betterthanenglish.com)
7 points by _riwy on Sept 16, 2012 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


cool, i'd have to add the following though:

1. Schadenfreude (German) - when you're happy about something bad that happens to someone else.

2. ihr|vosotros|wy (German,Spanish,Polish) - the second person plural, I think english really lacks this, the best solution I know of is ya'll but this has a lot of southern dialect connotations, you guys sort of works but the gender plural of guys makes it seem awkward.


I like the idea, but the quality of translations of polish words makes me wonder how correct the other ones are. Polish words I found were either incorrectly translated, or only a very obscure variation of their meaning was given.


Two handy picks for software development:

Verschlimmbesserung (German) - A supposed improvement that makes things worse.

Maya (Sanskrit) - The belief–often unfortunate–that the symbol of a thing is the same as the thing itself.




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