Lookups for the word "schadenfreude" have increased

[conuly]

Over 30,000% recently.

I tell you, one of the few real joys of the past four years is looking at the Merriam-Webster's Trending Words list. I've never been sure if they're actually trending words or if MW likes to troll the Right.

As noted at the website, when we're speaking English, it's an English-language word. I say this because every so often I come across somebody who insists that schadenfreude is an untranslateable German word with no English equivalent, and the joke's on them because the English word for schadenfreude is schadenfreude. Borrowings count. (Also, all human languages can express the same concepts, and no concept is really untranslateable, though some might require a bit of extra chatter to get across languages.)

Comments

[raino]

Well there are some words in Finnish that lack an equivalent in English (and vice versa). Barn-raising but like way more general, any event that community gathers to do some specific task without pay (but food expected) = talkoot. Mistress of the house but one who leads from the front, working as much as anyone else under her command or more generally the female in charge who is not just bossing but working = emäntä.

[raino]

And infuriatingly, there’s no good finnish word for ’spoiler’! We use the english word now and soon of course it will be part of Finnish.

[conuly]

I wonder when "spoiler", with the fannish sense, entered the general English vocabulary. I have the feeling it's a fairly recent word, but is my feeling correct?

One google search later: https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/spoiler-alert-revealing-the-origins-of-the-spoiler/

[conuly]

Right, I'm not saying that's not the case. But "this snappy lexical unit cannot be expressed in another language without some explanation" is not the same as "this word cannot be translated into another language".

You've just done it.

[siderea]

But this presupposes the explanation is the same as the word. That is, that an explanation can do the same linguistic work as the word it explains does.

In ioplokon's example, if a language has a word for "a bailiff who is also a notary" I can tell you something about that word and the culture it's from without knowing anything further: that culture has a set of notions and ideas about That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary. For instance what someone who is That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary customarily wears, or how they speak, or what social class they typically belong to, and what politics they might likely subscribe to. They probably have the local equivalent of That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary lightbulb jokes. And none of this – not even the fact that it exists – is even so much as hinted at by saying "well, it's A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary". The very fact that there's a word that means A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary means that that's a Thing in the culture being described*. It's not just a personal coincidence that this here person is both a bailiff and also a notary, they are occupying a social role called whatever word they use to call That Which Is Being Described As A Bailiff Who Is Also A Notary. And unless you use a word for that, you don't communicate that it is a Thing in this here other culture, that has this other language.

And why you can – "can" – explain how many Bailifs-who-are-also-Notaries it takes to screw in a lightbulb and why Bailifs-who-are-also-Notaries drinking their coffee black is a trope and how mostly they are working class but with educational aspirations and vote Tory, you will have thereby changed the topic and aren't talking about whatever the original story was about.

* Or occasionally the culture from which the writer is from, infelicitously projected on another culture erroneously.