why special ambassador, you're really spoiling us!
Gezellig up to your monitor for a second, as unless you’re a complete klloshar, I’d like to share my favourite news story of the day with you.
It’s on the top ten most untranslatable words. The winner is ilunga from the Bantu language of Tshiluba, and means a person ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.
I like that there’s a word for that kind of person. I like that different cultures have specific descriptors for matters of geography, or time, or even romance that make it impossible to fully ‘get’ what the speaker is saying. It makes me remember that a concept as simple as the colour blue might mean different things to different people, independent of the rods and cones in their eyes and just because of their mother tongue.
Apparently the most untranslatable English language word is plenipotentiary which I’m sure verlaine uses on a near daily basis in conversation, and probably in some clever way in scrabble too.
It’s on the top ten most untranslatable words. The winner is ilunga from the Bantu language of Tshiluba, and means a person ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.
I like that there’s a word for that kind of person. I like that different cultures have specific descriptors for matters of geography, or time, or even romance that make it impossible to fully ‘get’ what the speaker is saying. It makes me remember that a concept as simple as the colour blue might mean different things to different people, independent of the rods and cones in their eyes and just because of their mother tongue.
Apparently the most untranslatable English language word is plenipotentiary which I’m sure verlaine uses on a near daily basis in conversation, and probably in some clever way in scrabble too.