A.Word.A.Day -- AWADmail Issue 1154

For loanwords, I vote for Fingerspitzengefühl (literally, fingertip feeling), a sensitive feel for something.
-Mary Pratt, New York, New York (mary marypratt.net)

I am learning Indonesian. English sorely needs a word like dia, which means “he” or “she” in Indonesian.
dia = he, she, his, her
also these, no gender implied:
anak = child
adik = younger brother or sister
kakak = older brother or sister
You want gender? include the word laki-laki (male) or perempuan (female)
-Robert Unger, Crossville, Georgia (rwunger yahoo.com)

Here are a few loans from English to Finnish: baari (bar), biisi (piece of music), disko (discotheque), poni (pony), ralli (rally) and of course lots of sports like tennis and golf.
English has already borrowed sauna from Finnish, but my suggestion is löyly which is both the water thrown on the stones of the stove in the sauna but also the resulting steam and the ambiance in the sauna.
-Topi Linkala, Helsinki, Finland (nes iki.fi)

Although I live in Australia, French is my mother tongue. The loanword I would most like to borrow from French is the little word “si”. You may know that “si” can mean “if” or “so” (as in “C’est si bon”), but it’s its use as an affirmative word that I’d like to borrow. For example, if in English someone asks you “Aren’t you cold?”, you might reply, “Yes, I am.”
In French, the question would be “Tu n’as pas froid?” And the answer would be “Si!” One single affirmative little word that can mean so much.
-Gisele Mesnage and guide dog Nyota, Sydney Australia (giselemesnage bigpond.com)

I would like to propose the following word (and concept) for adoption in English:
Feierabend: It refers to the time when you finish work. It is often used in conjunction with beer, as in “Let’s go and have a Feierabend Bier (after-work drink).”
Even though I mostly enjoy work, I am very fond of the idea of celebrating the end of a workday and any accomplishments.
-Karin Widmer, Zurich, Switzerland (bibamus1 gmail.com)

Two of my favorite words are: From Konkani, susegad: why rush to do today, when you could do it next week (or Spanish mañana)
From Hindi, jugaad: a creative way to solve almost any problem.
-Jinx Akerkar, Mumbai, India (jinx akerkar.com)

I’ve always liked the onomatopoetic “kolokol”, the Russian word for “bell”.
-Pat Tompkins, Petaluma, California (tap batnet.com)

A Spanish word that other languages might like to borrow is desmadre: literally, un-mother. I’d never heard this word in Spanish class in Ohio, 50-odd years ago, but it’s common here. The meaning is close to the Yiddish word schemozzle (a favorite word of Evelyn Waugh, which he used in short stories to hilarious effect several times) or the cruder word clusterf***. When a gabacho (gringo) like me uses it in front of Mexicans, it usually provokes surprise and a smile.
-Ben Silverman, Rosarito, Mexico (bajabensilverman gmail.com)

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Persian has a single question word for “What number?” It’s “chandomin”. Chand = How much/many? And the suffix “omin” means “rank”. It is very useful in a question like “What number president was Kennedy?”
This lack of a single equivalent word in English was pointed out to me (an English teacher) while I was living in Iran in the 1970s.
-Ken Bus, Peoria, Arizona (kenbus50 aol.com)

There are some great words in the German language -- schadenfreude comes to mind -- but I think my favorite is Bettschwere, which translates literally to “bed gravity”. OK, to be honest, Schwere can also mean heaviness or difficulty, but I personally struggle greatly with bed gravity every morning.
-Gretchen Patti, Warrenville, Illinois (gltpatti gmail.com)

In Hebrew, the word “machtunaim” means the parents of a child-in-law. So, my son married a woman. Her parents are my machtunaim (mach-toon-ay-eem) with the “ch” being not the English sound but the Hebrew (and other languages) sound that I have no words to describe. It is a common relationship that I and others struggle to say in English, but in Israel it is said easily. The word “chatan” is the word for the groom at a wedding, and is the root.
-Betsy Wilson, El Segundo, California (w_betsy hotmail.com)

A word I wish were a loanword to English? Shauri, from Swahili. When I lived in Kenya in the 1970s, we (and by that I mean everyone in the country, speakers of any language), used it to mean a discussion, a meeting, an agreement, a mild argument or disagreement, and it applied equally well to a family discussion, an endless conversation with your neighbor about why his cows keep getting into your field, a meeting at the local elementary school about raising school fees, or a presidential cabinet meeting -- each of these is a shauri. If you say you’re going to have a shauri with someone about an issue large or small, everyone knows what you mean. I still say shauri all the time... or want to, anyway. Need to bring this useful word into English.
-Jay Mead, Denver, Colorado (jaymead yahoo.com)

One term I have always loved is German Kabelsalat, which translates to “cable salad” and very aptly describes what happens behind the desk and in server rooms and control boxes when people aren’t tidy with their wires and cables.
-Moria Feighery-Ross, Half Moon Bay, California (mfross pai-qbd.com)

From German: Volksverdummung: deliberate deception of the public. Stultification/stupefaction of a whole nation when politicians think they can twist reality and change facts in order to keep the population uninformed and malleable mentally. An example form an online article of mine in Jun 2008: “Maybe another example for Volksverdummung would have been more convincing, e.g. the reasons that led the Americans to believe there were WMDs in Iraq and we would be greeted as liberators, that the war would pay for itself; ironically by oil. I hope the concept made it across the language barrier.”
-Siggy Buckley, Jacksonville, Florida (sigrun123 comcast.net)

Since I started learning Swedish I’ve admired their pronouns for family and relatives. in particular, where English only has “grandfather” and “grandmother”, which can lead to confusion and the need for clarification, Swedish has “farfar” for father’s father, and “mormor” for mother’s mother, and the other permutations, morfar & farmor. similarly for other close relations: farbror, etc. Seems waaaay more useful to me, while being simultaneously parsimonious with characters!
-Bob Mills, Turners Falls, Massachusetts (mills bobmills.org)

Here are some English words common in Mexican Spanish: (spelling may vary as these words are not always written)
parkear - to park
truca - pickup truck
catchiar - to catch
ponchar - to puncture
un push - give me a push
un ride - give me a ride
bateria - car battery
-Daniel Miller, Laredo, Texas (milldaniel gmail.com)

There are two Filipino words that I think would be of great use to English speakers: gigil and kilig. To this day I have not found an accurate translation for either.
“Gigil” means to feel something so intensely and it creeps into your actions. When one is “gigil” (or its superlative, “gigil na gigil”), it’s like you’re chomping at the bit or itching to do something. A mother can be gigil with her baby, saying out loud, “I just want to eat you up.” A supervisor can be gigil with an employee, such that every small mistake can seem like a monumental incursion. Lovers can be so gigil that they can’t keep their hands off each other.
Quite close in sentiment is “kilig”. It’s to feel so thrilled and giddy, usually because of love or infatuation, to feel it like a shiver down your spine, like a tingling across your skin. It’s the thrill of young love, first love. It’s the excitement of meeting your idol, finally, in person, to inhale their scent, perhaps even to feel their touch. Comically, it’s also used to refer to the shiver you feel after a very satisfying trip to the bathroom after a much-needed pee!
-Regina Layug-Rosero, Manila, Philippines (rejjventress gmail.com)

In Afrikaans there is a very descriptive but untranslatable word that I love. It is gril. It basically means to be repulsed by. To shudder or squirm away from. Ek gril om aan hom te vat. I shudder to touch him would be the literal translation, but it fails to capture the actual depth of loathing that is felt by the unfortunate touchee.
-Peter Pankhurst, Cape Town, South Africa (ptrpankhurst yahoo.com)

The words that have been borrowed from the Greek language are so many and so widely used that they don’t seem foreign to English native speakers. Also, with globalisation and use of social media, there are so many English words that have been added to the Greek contemporary vocabulary. Greeklish is the new language among the youth, and not only here. As you say, languages are living organisms -- they are born, grow, intermarry, even die.
-Eleni Halepi, Thessaloniki, Greece (halepie yahoo.gr)

Icelandic changed little from about the year 1000 to about 1975. In the last century they even went to the length of repurposing old Icelandic words for new technologies, for example, sími, an old word meaning wire, was pressed into service to mean telephone. But latterly the increasing spread of technology, plus the ubiquity of English on the internet, has started to defeat the doughty defenders of the Icelandic language, and loanwords are becoming far more common. Two that are particularly prevalent among the young are Hæ and Bæ; all you need to know to work out what they mean is that the Icelandic letter Æ, æ is pronounced like I, eye, so Hæ is “Hi” and Bæ is “Bye” -- the common words young people the world over use for Hello and Goodbye.
-John Nugée, London, UK (john nugee.org.uk)

I achieved fluency in German in my 30s, and I regularly find that a word in one language fits the nuance of a situation better than the same word in the other. Sometimes I will use these words when speaking with someone else who speaks both languages. In fact language mixing is quite common among multilinguals.
German is known for its long words, but sometimes it’s the other way around. One word I use quite often is “stau” (sht-ow, rhymes with cow), instead of “traffic jam.” It is short, concise and really gives a good feeling of “stuck”.
Another good short word is “jein”, the contraction of “ja” (“yah”) meaning yes and “nein” (“nine”) meaning no. Depending on the situation, it can mean “yes and no” or “sort of”.
Another great word is “doch”, which is a contradiction word, often used to indicate disagreement usually in the positive with something someone else has said. “I didn’t eat the last cookie.” “Doch! There was one left when I left the kitchen, and when I came back, they were all gone.” And then there is the word “Handy.” This is a great alternative to “cell phone.” It is an easy word to pick up and conveys well its extensive usability.
English on the other hand is everywhere. As an American abroad, I find you can’t escape it.
-Eric Plumlee, Niederlenz, Switzerland (ericfplumlee hotmail.com)