Don’t you sometimes wish you could say…

If only we had a team of talented writers following us everywhere, who would simply know what we wished to say and would telepathically transmit to us, at the right time, that wonderful comeback or the finely crafted and winning argument. I don’t have such a team. My tongue often manages to stumble in a big way in the small recesses of my mouth and blurt pearls of foolishness at the wrong time. You must know the feeling, even if not as frequently as I do.

Sometimes I only need a single word to express a sentiment, and I just can’t come up with it. My tongue is not always my friend; it often hordes all sorts of words at its tip, refusing to give them me. And that got me thinking of words that don’t exist in the English language, but express concepts so well that they are worthy of being shared:

• PYT from Danish: “Pyt doesn’t have an exact English translation. It’s more a cultural concept about cultivating healthy thoughts to deal with stress”, I learned from Popular Science. Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world, ranking second happiest for the last 3 years, and so the Danes must know something more than most of us on happiness. Instead of getting upset by daily hassles, the Danes apparently interject with pyt and decide “that it’s not worth letting someone else’s actions, which are out of your control, bother you”, says the same article. It even suggests to use a “pytbutton”, to help us let go. Pyt is definitely a word I wish we had in English, and one I’m going to start using, embracing the wisdom of the quote to the right…

• Schadenfreude from German: Schadenfreude “is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another” Wikipedia tells us. Sounds nasty, and yet think about all the jokes, the movies, the stories that we’ve all laughed at that described a scenario where someone’s misery or just plain idiocy makes are giggle. Or at least smirk. It’s almost an involuntary reaction for most of us. It’s the slapstick comedy that will result 3 seconds after the scene to the right… Yes, you may try to warn the owner of the shoe, but you know most will experience schadenfreude 😀

• HIRAETH from Welsh: Hiraeth is “like a combination of the homesickness, longing, nostalgia, and yearning, for a home that you cannot return to, no longer exists, or maybe never was. It can also include grief or sadness for who or what you have lost, losses which make your ‘home’ not the same as the one you remember” I learned here. Hiraeth is one of those words that does not translate easily to English, but if you’ve experienced the loss of a loved one, this word may resonate with you like it has with me. It’s not only the temporary parting, a la “parting is such sweet sorrow”, it’s the parting from a place you can no longer return to.

What term or feeling would you like to have a word for in English?