Vladimir Nabokov, a famous Russian writer who spent much of his life in the United States and Europe, described the Russian word Toska as follows: “There is no single English word to show all the shades of toska. It is its deepest and most painful sense, the sensation of great spiritual anguish; the one that often has no specific cause. It is a dull pain of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick longing. A vague restlessness, mental agony, longing. Sometimes, it can be the desire for something or someone in particular, nostalgia, a pain of love “.
Of course, a writer of that caliber can poeticize a word, especially with the weight of nostalgia knowing that he was self-exiled from his mother country, but it is not something new. There are many words that cannot be translated into other languages and Spanish has beautiful and sometimes subtle expressions that cannot be translated into English either.
I love you
“I like you” will not be compared to an I love you. A display of affection that says something more than friendship, a shared intimacy that has not yet reached love but shows that it is where it goes. Despite everything, a I love you is not said to anyone either.
desktop
Perhaps in Anglo-Saxon countries they never needed it, but in all countries where Spanish is spoken, cooking, eating and after-dinner go hand in hand. How many times have we eaten with the family and spent more than three hours at the table? Time in which the little food that was left is finished, the coffee is served and the loudest gossip you will hear in your life is told.
Hairless
The lack of hair on almost the entire body is not only a matter of people who speak Spanish, however in English the closest thing they can think of to this word is hairless.
shame or embarrassment of others
Feeling sorry for something is easy in any language, but while English has the word cringe, it alludes to an expression, not to that feeling of shame when someone is doing something chills our bones and makes us want to turn away.
morbid
The morbidity is seen in the show, in the red note, in sex. It is so vast that sometimes even we cannot describe it, but it is so present in our lives that we always know who or what is something morbid.
cloying
Too sweet might be the only way to talk about that feeling of turning 25 and eating a slice of triple chocolate cake in one sitting. Something that before you could do without problem now cloys you in the third bite.
get up early
It’s hard for us to call Early birds and Night owls, but in English it’s hard to imagine a word for people who always wake up early, beating the sun and sometimes doing many of their activities before others wake up.
one-armed
Although because in English words similar to this are considered insults, Spanish has also stopped using them. However one-armed, for a long time it was not a reason for ridicule, but to designate a person without a hand.
Namesake, brand new or the day before yesterday are other words that English does not have in its vocabulary. Read more and enrich your vocabulary, because Spanish is one of the most beautiful languages that exist in the world.