What's the Word for That?
Sometimes there is no word to express what you want to say.
When travelling abroad, you might feel the distinct and utterly unique anxiety of having to speak another language. It is such a commonly held experience for the Japanese that they have a word for that feeling. Literally translated, it means "to eat a meal sideways."
And if you have ever watched a Japanese student try to manoeuvre the English language minefield, you have probably felt their anxiety secondhand.
The Japanese have words for a lot of things that we do not, ideas and feelings and experiences pinpointed by a special Japanese term. The Japanese language comes through where English fails: a dappled light shining through the leaves (komorebi), the act of leaving a new book unread, adding it to the bedside pile (tsundoku), a mother who relentlessly pushes her child towards academic achievement (kyoikumama), or even to look worse after a haircut (age-otori). The list goes on. And English mutely stands on the sidelines.
German too wrests a linguistic muscle when there is need. A German can talk about the feeling of being alone in the woods (waldeinsamkeit) or a street so crowded with road signs that a person gets lost (schilderwald). A German might look sourly at another German and see a backpfeifengesicht, a face badly in need of a fist.
We can learn a lot about the Japanese and the Germans from these and other unique words. Some words make us laugh. Others make us ache with a yearning, a small, melancholic wish that we too could express such subtly.
To wake up early in the morning with the sole purpose of going outside to hear the first bird sing: oh, to be a Swede, to stretch and say, "Gökotta."
But, in all this, we can also learn a lot about ourselves. Why does English lack, a language that does not blush when there is a need to borrow?
We each have experienced at some time the frustration of waiting for friend to show up. Do only the Inuit talk about iktsuarpok?
John Koenig is one person has stepped in to fill the void. His Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows offers newly invented words. We have all lived with the definitions. Now he has delivered the newly-minted English words:
The moment in which a conversation becomes alive and real: flashover.
The desire to capture a fleeting experience: morii.
A feature of modern society that suddenly strikes you as absurd and grotesque: wytai.
And my favourite, kenopsia: the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people, but is now abandoned and quiet, a school hallway in the evening, an unlit office on a weekend, vacant fairgrounds now silent and motionless.
But John Koenig's dictionary speaks primarily of sorrow, of loss, missed opportunity, like a disappointing turn down the wrong road. What about the joyous moment, the happy mistakes, the revelations and wonders revealed?
We know the experiences. We yearn for them. Now give us the words:
• The state of knowing you are on the right path, even before the first step is taken. That is the definition. What is the word?
• Or try this one: the realization that one's experiences, hopes and dreams are not unique, but shared by many.
• We have all met a stranger and then, within minutes of conversation, have felt, "I know this person. I have known them for years, possibly lifetimes."
This is something real, tangible and shared, so let's have a word so that we can talk about it.
