17 Foreign Words English Desperately Needs
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📚 🤯 English just doesn’t have enough words. And there are some we desperately need! Can you tell someone they had a crazy idea with just one word? How about making plans for the day after tomorrow? I searched the globe to find 17 of the most interesting words. And I’m here to convince you we need to start using them. Right now.
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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
0:23 – Shemomechama
1:52 – ib-i simsimhada
2:50 – Abbiocco
4:09 – Sobremesa
6:23 – Iktsuarpok
7:00 – Schnapsidee
8:11 – Hygge
10:23 – Ubuntu
11:43 – Chunibyo
13:12 – Zeg
14:53 – Sommer
16:03 – Lagom
18:04 – Tartle
19:09 – Mamihlapinatapai
20:52 – Treppenwitz
22:07 – Tingo
23:15 – Holoholo
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
As a South Africa, I was happy to see two words from my country on here. “Ubuntu” and “sommer.”
Is sommer the African equivalent of the Dutch ‘zomaar’? 🤔
“Eergister” is the day before yesterday, “Oormôre” the day after tomorrow
Yebo.
When it comes to “lagom” I can imagine a word emerging in English from weed smoking culture where people often pass a joint around. There’s often a little bitterness in large circles when someone takes more than the polite number of tokes. In fact it’d probably just end up being “lagom.”
The word comes from an old grammatical construct basically meaning something similar to “according to law”, the origin shown in the video is a myth. But yes, if you take a lagom amount, noone will get upset.
There is an expression in greek that i think is kind of the same as lagom. It’s “toso oso” and literally translates to “that much as much”. Its used to mean exactly as much as needed no more or less.
I’ve heard the term “to bogart”, as in “don’t bogart that joint, man” used for this.
Spanish has the estrenar which means using or wearing something for the first time.
Treppenwitz in French: “l’esprit de l’escalier”, or spirit of the staircase, when the riposte comes to you to late to be useful.
My Indian colleagues use the word “needful” to mean “whatever needs to be done.” Not sure if they’ve translated it from their language, or just adapted it. It’s very useful to say “I’ll do the needful” instead of, “I’ll do the things thst need to be done.”
Interesting!
They’ve adapted it. I find it very interesting the way Indians use English in their own way!
Guestimate is the best word.
You could also say “what’s needed” or “what’s necessary” but I agree that needful works well too.
We use ” needful” in Brazil
My favorite Japanese word is 木漏れ日 (Komorebi), or in English: “sunlight filtering through the foliage”
Love it!
I love that! It is a most beautiful sight
“I am what I am because of who we all are” is my favorite operating system
😁
This is also captured by Tagalog “kapwa” – this is one of the cornerstones of the Philippine approach to psychology.
What? “Arch” is an English word isn’t? 🤔
English already has words to describe a light rain but none are as eloquent the Malay/Indonesian onomatopoeia derived word “Rintik-rintik” which so completely captures the sight and sound of such rain.
Love it!
In portuguese we call it chuvisco and garoa (in brazil)
I AM SO HAPPY TO SEE MY MOTHER TONGUE ON YOUR VIDEO FINALLY ❤❤❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉
Olly : “The day after tomorrow. What’s the word for that again?”
me: “Oh! Übermorgen!”
Olly: “Oh wait, there’s no word for it”
me: “Verdammt.”
Finnish has ylihuomenna litterally overtomorrow
I feel like I’ve used “aftermorrow” in English before, so I’m surprised to hear he didn’t find anything at all
@@Mel-Yeah, I instantly though of it tho.
Overmorrow as well!
Doesn’t “overmorrow” exist? I mean, it’s not in common use anymore but it’s one of those words that should make a comeback imo
The Ubuntu mentality should be acquired by all of us, particularly in the western world!
One of my favorite Sardinian words is “fedale”, which could be translated as “long-time friend from a young age”, a person you grew up with and still share a friendship with as the decades pass
That’s lovely!
Is it related to fidelis? As in sempre fidelis?
@@drakesmith471 it comes from ‘fetalis, fetus’
@@michelefrau6072 ah, makes sense. Thank you.
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There *is* an English word that, if not exactly the same, captures what seems like a lot of the essence of ‘shemomechama’. That word is ‘snaccident’, a portmanteau of ‘snack’ and ‘accident’. “Oops, I had a bit of a snaccident: there’s no more sausage rolls left from that multipack I bought this morning!”
Good one!
Thanks Olly for that enjoyable video. I think I’ll adopt “ubuntu” in my everyday life! 😊
Another interesting and super useful word very commonly used in Indian English, and one that seriously deserves to go mainstream is “prepone”, as in the opposite of postpone. It means to bring something forward.
In India, you’ll very often hear something like “the meeting has been preponed from next week to tomorrow” for example.
Interestingly prepone was an English word, appearing in print first in 1549 when a Puritan social reformer called Robert Crowley wrote “I do prepone and set the Lord alwaye and before myne eyes”.
The word then disappeared for over three centuries before being resurrected in South Asia, where it now thrives!
Very interesting!
The word for the day after tomorrow is Overmorrow. It was used in Shakespeare’s day. Chaucer knew the word too.
In Mexican Spanish, besides the expression “porque sí”, which means “just because”; another single word we use for that is “nomás”.
Example: Why did you do that?
-Nomás.
In the American South, “the Monday after the next Monday” is “Monday Week” . Very useful.
I as a German had my first Treppenwitz-situation as a 10yo when a classmate crashed into a parked car with his bicycle, accusing me to be too stupid to ride a bike later that same day. Sadly I didn’t remember the perfect counter attack until 5 minutes later when I went down the stairs out of the school. That was when the true meaning of Treppenwitz hit me. A truly enlightening moment for every young German.