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What's a word or concept in your language that does not translate very well to English? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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Asking non-native English speakers.

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[–] 43 points 2 weeks ago* (6 children)

Russian is more productive than English, so there's a bunch of "we just smushed a bunch of prefixes and suffixes on it" words that don't have a great English equivalent, like недоперепить -- to drink quite a lot but not succeed at drinking too much. I don't think we properly have листопад which is the equivalent of "snowfall" but for autumn leaves. I really miss успевать -- to successfully have enough time to do something. There's also кипяток -- water that has been boiled but then slightly cooled, like 200-205 degrees F. The canonical examples are тоска , which is a kind of melancholy longing, and авось which expresses optimism but I basically never heard anyone actually say.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago

    I think авось has a general meaning similar to "god willing", or "with some luck", not simply some optimism. Like "авось успеем" -> "with some luck, we can make it in time". I do agree it's an old-fashioned word which I haven't really heard in a while.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    As someone who speaks the exact bare minimum amount of Russian to get by in Estonia (so basically hello, please, thank you, fuck you, good bye), there's a couple Russian words of the "not in front of your babushka" type that IMO lose a bit of character when translated to the English phrases that mean the same thing:

    похуй - universal answer whenever someone raises a concern

    хуйня - very versatile word

    I'll let you do the honor of translating them.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    very versatile word

    So, pretty much anything and sometimes exact opposite thing 🥲

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    Pretty much.

    In the context of how I hear it used in Estonia at least, it both means something is very annoying, or it means it's so unimportant it doesn't matter. It also just means "thingamajig". I suspect there are use cases I can't think of right now or ones that I don't even know.

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