Do you often find that english just doesn't have the word that you are looking for?


Out of the top of my head i remember one.

My first language is portuguese. In portuguese, we have the verb "namorar" which is to be in a relationship, what comes before being engaged to marry. I guess in english you can use "dating", but it's not the same thing, as you can just have one or two dates with someone and then stop.... I guess it means "going steady" or something, but that hardly is a substitute for namorar. We also use the nouns namorado and namorada for boyfriend and girlfriend.
So how would you say: C e meu namorado, nos estamos namorando" ?
"C is my boyfriend, we're dating"?
"C is my boyfriend, we're going steady"?

It's just not the same :)

Post yours!

well yeah there are alot...like a word "son"...means that which is seen when sleeping...no its not a dream...we have another word for that

So how would you say: C e meu namorado, nos estamos namorando" ?
"C is my boyfriend, we're dating"?
"C is my boyfriend, we're going steady"?


May be, "C is my boyfriend, I am going with him"? Inspired by "I am sleeping with him".

We translate namorar literally as "to fall in love." It's the same word as Spanish enamorar, although they usually use it reflexively as enamorarse con alguien. Enamorado is "in love." Yo soy enamorado con esta mujer means "I am in love with this woman."

In Mexico they say tenemos sitios for "we are dating," and a boyfriend or girlfriend is un novio o una novia. Literally that means "fiance" or "fiancee," or "betrothed" in more formal language, but today it just means "going steady."

English has a huge wordstock. It's not easy to find a word in another language that doesn't have a good translation. Usually it has to be from a totally different kind of society, like perhaps a primitive tribal people, who have concepts we don't have. Life in our St. Paul is not really so different from life in your São Paulo. :)

We translate namorar literally as "to fall in love." It's the same word as Spanish enamorar, although they usually use it reflexively as enamorarse con alguien. Enamorado is "in love." Yo soy enamorado con esta mujer means "I am in love with this woman."

namorar is not the same as enamorar... enamorar, or to fall in love in portuguese we have apaixonar

Eu estou apaixonado = I am in love = Estoy enamorado



In Mexico they say tenemos sitios for "we are dating," and a boyfriend or girlfriend is un novio o una novia. Literally that means "fiance" or "fiancee," or "betrothed" in more formal language, but today it just means "going steady."


that's another false cognat between portuguese and spanish

novio in spanish = namorado in portuguese

I didn't know novio can be used for fiance and for "going steady", though...
In portuguese (infinitive forms):
"ficar" = hooking up, no serious involvement (it's slang)
namorar = going steady, dating, become someone's boyfriend
noivar = to be engaged, become someone's fiance
casar = to marry, become someone's husband



English has a huge wordstock. It's not easy to find a word in another language that doesn't have a good translation. Usually it has to be from a totally different kind of society, like perhaps a primitive tribal people, who have concepts we don't have. Life in our St. Paul is not really so different from life in your São Paulo. :)

That's true... and the reason why I keep merrian webster always open :)
but i'm still nt satisfied with the translation for namorar. You have the concept, it's the same thing as going steady, but going steady is not a word, and it's not as formal as namorar... I'd expect that such a common relation should have it's own verb :)

"gezellig"

could translate it with cosy, except that cosy doesn't the same value or coverage.

I actually find the opposite mostly...

varda your name is so similar to mine, so let's be friends, my first language is fininsh, the second is swedish and the third is english

i hate swedish i never find the right words... english is much better,
maybe english is my second language

p.s. i write poor english on purpose to make me look stupid
page/post 1444 on this book

I actually find the opposite mostly...

that does happen sometimes, but it's more unusual for me, as it is much easier for me to find a word in portuguese ... I'm a lot more articulate in my native language :)

I actually have been mainly speaking English for the past 7 years. I always need at least a week in Holland to get the basics again, and probably a year or so to get a more intricate sense of the Dutch language again.

It's a horror to write an email in Dutch.

Several times. I know the word in Urdu/Hindi, but there is no counterpart which gives the same shade of meaning in English.

e.g. silsila, which means the chain of events in a story, but you cannot use the phrase as you would the word.

couldn't you use the word "plot" for that?

That's another false cognat between Portuguese and Spanish. Novio in Spanish = namorado in Portuguese.No, you misunderstand the meaning of "cognate." Cognates are two words from the same origin in an ancestral language. They do not necessarily retain the same meanings, since meanings shift as much as pronunciations with the passage of time. A queen is a ruler in English, but in Norwegian a kvinne is any woman. A knight is a non-hereditary nobleman (in olden days a noble soldier), but in German a Knecht is a man who is hired to do menial labor on a farm. A hound is a specially bred hunting dog, but Latin canis and Greek kyne are generic words for any dog. To embrace is to wrap one's arms around another person in affection, sympathy or ritual greeting, (same as Spanish abrazar), but embrasser is the French word for "to kiss." Spanish enamorado, Italian inamorato, and Portuguese namorado are cognates because they derive from the same word in Latin. But their meanings have diverged over the centuries.
I didn't know novio can be used for fiance and for "going steady", though.Slang is a powerful engine for change in language. Informal usage shifts quickly because people want words that have more emotional power--connotation--whereas formal usage concentrates more on accurate meaning--denotation. If you've followed colloquial English, look at the evolution of the slang word for "really good" since the 1950s: cool, hot, bitchin', bad, phat, awesome... and that's not all of them. I doubt that two ambassadors or university professors would use novia to mean anything except "fiancee" in their conversations, but in more casual settings it can mean "girlfriend," even when the couple has no intention of ever marrying.
But i'm still not satisfied with the translation for namorar.I don't have a good Portuguese dictionary at this location so perhaps I'm wrong.
You have the concept, it's the same thing as going steady, but going steady is not a word, and it's not as formal as namorar... I'd expect that such a common relation should have it's own verb.In English, with our short words, it's pretty common to use two words to express a concept. "Going steady" is actually out of vogue now. We're struggling to find a new word--especially for an unmarried couple who live together--but "significant other" is a popular mouthful. Some people just say "lover." One year the government census forms used the phrase "Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters," and there was a brief movement to use the abbreviation POSSLQ in speech, pronounced poss-l-kyoo. It never caught on. :)
Several times. I know the word in Urdu/Hindi, but there is no counterpart which gives the same shade of meaning in English. E.g. silsila, which means the chain of events in a story, but you cannot use the phrase as you would the word.Is it not the same thing as the "plot"?

In mongolian we have many words describing different shades of color of animals. Especially there are a lot of words for horse color shades. Also there are many words to describe the way a horse walks or runs, depending on the speed and the 'style'. It would be interesting to know how one describes these in english.

In Mongolian we have many words describing different shades of color of animals. Especially there are a lot of words for horse color shades. Also there are many words to describe the way a horse walks or runs, depending on the speed and the 'style'. It would be interesting to know how one describes these in English.It has become a joke that English has words for hundreds of different colors, but only women can see them. When choosing a color to paint the living room walls, a woman will agonize over the choice between two colors such as "ecru" and "Navajo white," but to a man they look identical. Women pretend there is a color of clothing called "navy blue," which they can distinguish from black, but to us they look the same except in bright sunlight.

As for horses, that comes from culture. People who own horses and love them have a huge vocabulary for their care, appearance and performance, but most of us don't know those words.

Every profession or specialty has its own vocabulary. In music, a "country shuffle" is a fast waltz in 6/8 time, with accents on 1, 3, 4 and 6, and a backbeat on 4. "Western swing" is an older version of the same rhythm, with no backbeat.

In mongolian we have many words describing different shades of color of animals. Especially there are a lot of words for horse color shades. Also there are many words to describe the way a horse walks or runs, depending on the speed and the 'style'. It would be interesting to know how one describes these in english.

hey that is cool...that should be because the horse played a very important part in your history. It is a shame I don't understand Mongolion causeI would like to know what different collors a horse can have and why...

I think Brittish Enlgish has a much richer and more complex vocabilarium...wich makes that you can express much more in Brittish Enlgish than in American English.

Is it not the same thing as the "plot"?

It refers to the chain rather than the story.:)

hey that is cool...that should be because the horse played a very important part in your history. It is a shame I don't understand Mongolion cause I would like to know what different collors a horse can have and why...

Horse was very important in history as well as now. I did some googling and came to believe that it is not that English does not have those words, but a few people use those words, while in Mongolia almost everybody knows and uses those words.

Followings hint to a body of English vocabulary for horse (or other animal) color shades. You can even find genetic explanations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equine_coat_color
http://www.georgianindex.net/horse_and_carriage/horse-descript.html

I grew up in a French/English home. Most my schooling in French until college. I get frustrated trying to translate fron English into French rather than the other way....especially when asked to translate science abstracts. There just isn't the complexity of vocabulary in French to be precise in the minutia of detail. Also, when I read some older geology publications in French there is often an ambivalence as to what the researcher was conveying.

The issues of translating from French to English are more 'cultural than linguistic. This is as often with a similar sounding word as much as one from a different language root. A word such as 'nation' in English and 'la nation' have different emotional levels in ach language. 'Le pays' is sort of the same as 'country' but also 'nation' but also can be a collective experience that doesn't have an equivalency in English.

Languages are more than words.At the end of a working day I like to listen to the French radio channel or watch TV in French. It's more relaxing yet visceral at the same time. English is more 'usefull' but in a mechanical sense. I'm not a big sports fan but watching sports in English is like listening to the news or a lecture. It's as if the commentators are a cloud on top of the event keeping out the emotion. Watching a hockey game or baseball game in French is more like I'm actually at the game and it's a big party. Then again, the Montreal Expos no longer exist, so I don't watch baseball at all in either language anymore.

In French please.

I'm not a big sports fan but watching sports in English is like listening to the news or a lecture. It's as if the commentators are a cloud on top of the event keeping out the emotion. Watching a hockey game or baseball game in French is more like I'm actually at the game and it's a big party.Interesting perspective. I'm not a sports fan at all, but the announcers of American football and basketball games drive me crazy because they sound so emotional. I agree that I don't get that from baseball, but then baseball is an excruciatingy slow game and listening to someone describe it is like listening to a government project status report.
Then again, the Montreal Expos no longer exist, so I don't watch baseball at all in either language anymore.Sure they do. They're the Washington Nationals and my friends go to see them. :)

I've had this experience before. A few years after I moved to Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers. The New York Giants moved to San Francisco at the same time, and Californians went crazy to finally have major league baseball on the West Coast.

Do you often find that english just doesn't have the word that you are looking for?

I'd agree that every language has words that impart a certain shade of meaning that can't be easily conveyed in another language.

However, I'd say English has a larger vocabulary than most languages. As a doctor, I often see patients who speak various languages and we must communicate via a translator. I'll say three words, and the translation will be a paragraph! I notice that many speakers of foriegn languages speak very quickly so that they can squeeze in all the words required to say something that can be said in a few words in English.

Consider
Spanish: Mira a la izquierda. (8 syllables )
English: Look left. (2 syllables)
Spanish: Mira para arriba. (7 syllables )
English: Look up. (2 syllables )
Spanish: Mira a la derecha. (7 syllables )
English: Look right. (2 syllables )

Varda, out of curiosity, do you speak English with a Portuguese accent?

Sometimes, but mostly it's the other way around. English is much more 'expressive' than my own language (Dutch).

English is sooooooooo limiting than Russian language...there are so many emotions and concepts that can be described in Russian and not in english...

However, I'd say English has a larger vocabulary than most languages. As a doctor, I often see patients who speak various languages and we must communicate via a translator. I'll say three words, and the translation will be a paragraph! I notice that many speakers of foriegn languages speak very quickly so that they can squeeze in all the words required to say something that can be said in a few words in English.

Consider: Spanish: Mira a la izquierda. (8 syllables); English: Look left. (2 syllables); Spanish: Mira para arriba. (7 syllables); English: Look up. (2 syllables); Spanish: Mira a la derecha. (7 syllables); English: Look right. (2 syllables)Yes, but look more closely. These are not vocabulary limitations. The Spanish words are perfectly equivalent in meaning to the English words, they just have more syllables. In addition, Spanish syntax requires more "noise words" than English. They can't say, "Look left," they have to say, "Look to the left."

English began streamlining its phonetics a thousand years ago, when Anglo-Saxon evolved into Middle English after the Norman Invasion. Hundreds of common words like "come" and "are" dropped their E and became monosyllables. We also streamlined our grammar and lopped off most of our inflections. Germans still say, Wir haben einen guten Haus, seven syllables, with a first-person plural ending on the verb and an accusative ending on both the article and the adjective. We found a way to get along without all those inflections and shortened the same words to four syllables: "We have a good house." We also streamlined our syntax. Even the French, who have done a fabulous job of silencing their final E's and losing their inflections (in speech if not in writing), have to say, La plume de ma tante in five syllables, when we can say, "My aunt's pen" in three.

We use the process of synthesis to express relationships more compactly than languages which have to use prepositions: English "doghouse" vs. Spanish casa de perro.

And you're right, languages like Spanish and (even worse) Italian are spoken much more quickly than French and (even better) English in order to attain the same information transfer rate.

Of course as I've often mentioned, Chinese has it all over English. In my own admittedly unscientific tallies, I clock an average of seven Chinese syllables to ten in English, in the equivalent sentence. Their phonetics, grammar, syntax, and word-building facility are far more streamlined and advanced than ours. Chinese has no inflections at all because it has no gender, tense, number, mode, etc. It's made up of one-syllable morphemes that can be combined into compounds that are analogous to our words. It has virtually no noise words: no articles or prepositions. And as a result Chinese is spoken more slowly than English. It's easy for a student or a foreigner to pick out the words he knows and extract some meaning out of a conversation.

You can't possibly do that with Spanish or Russian. :)