Hello, and welcome to this week’s Friday 5! Please copy these questions to your webspace. Answer the questions there; then leave a comment below so we’ll all know where to check out your responses. Please don’t forget to link us from your website!
This week’s questions (and their explanatory introductions) are inspired by this Mental Floss article about words in other languages without English equivalents. We did a first round of these words in October, three years ago, so feel free to use these as well, if you missed them the first time!
- In German, fernweh is a longing for distant places, perhaps even places you’ve never been. What place you’ve never been do you have fernweh for?
- In Finnish, myötähäpeä is “the kinder, gentler cousins of schadenfreude, something akin to “vicarious embarrassment.” For whom did you last feel myötähäpeä?
- In Japanese, shouganai means “there’s nothing we can do about it, so we accept it, rather than waste time worrying or being angry.” How good are you at saying shouganai and putting it into practice?
- In Scots, tartle is the “panicky hesitation just before you have to introduce someone whose name you can’t quite remember.” When did you last experience tartle and how did you handle it?
- In Georgian, zeg means “the day after tomorrow.” What are you doing zeg?*
Thanks for participating, and may your weekend be safe and lagom!
* I’m sure many languages have a word meaning “the day after tomorrow.” In Japanese, it’s “asatte” (明後日), but I already used Japanese and I wanted five different languages for these questions.
