English is an embracing language amass of words for every situation and emotion

English is an embracing language amass of words for every situation and emotion. But then, sometimes even English just doesn`t have the right word for an action, or a feeling.                             
There is something about “Gemutlichkeit” (spelt – and pronounced -  without the German Umlaut) which seems to convey feelings of comfort, warmth, belonging, fun, and deep happiness so much better and comprehensively than any English word could.                                                                                                       
An English native speaker can just as easily find pleasure in someone else`s misfortune, as any other person, but there is no word for it. They use the German “Schadenfreude”; maybe because it sounds less spiteful.                                                                                                                                                                     
Although great travellers, at some point the English feel homesick and want to return home. When they get itchy feet again and long to travel once more to far distant shores, they fall back on a further German word: “Fernweh”.                                                                                                                                    
Recently, a new addition has arrived – both in the original German and in English – “Fremdschämen”- that feeling of shame you feel on behalf of someone else, for what someone else has said, or done. It is a kind of second-hand embarrassment.
When it comes to the word “Geisterfahrer”, I was sure it would at some point arrive on this “immigrant word” scene. I had often thought, how come we have so many Geisterfahrer in Germany and you never hear of one when travelling in Great Britain. The truth is simple – they were always talking about “drivers travelling in the wrong direction” or “oncoming traffic” and I simply hadn`t understood that they meant a car driving head-on towards me on my side of the road. Euphemisms well-placed, I suppose, but a snappy phrase to get people to sit up and notice would be more appropriate, maybe. I had actually been waiting for an expression like “ghost drivers”, which would be a translation of what they are called in Germany. Now I know that there are actually ghost drivers in Great Britain, some are foreign, but many are British. They are ghost drivers not due to driving on the wrong side of the road but because they have not registered their address with the DVLA and therefore when the car is involved in an incident of any kind, the police do not have an address for the car owner. This is less dangerous, but in case of an accident, just as annoying.                                                                                                                
Maybe some other language has a suitable suggestion?

#mjboyle                                                                                                                                            
#mirrormirroronthewall                                                                                                                       
#greatbritain                                                                                                                                                             
#english                                                                                                                                                                     
#books                                                                                                                                                             
#englishbooks                                                                                                                                                                      
#bookpassion                                                                                                                                                                       
#reading                                                                                                                                                             
#bookreader                                                                                                                                        
#readeveryday                                                                                                                                                    
#abookaday  
            

Post Views : 120