Borrowed words spice up English

English tends to gobble up useful foreign words. Some wonderful words are not even knocking on the door of English, however.

|
Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor
Cayenne peppers (red), bird's eye chili peppers (green), and habanero peppers (orange), are seen on March 25, 2015 in Hingham, Massachusetts.

What are some words that we don’t have in English but should? A reader asked this question and suggested picante as an example. This is a common Spanish word, which identifies the taste and mouthfeel of foods containing lots of chili peppers. We can describe this taste as “spicy hot” in English, but “hot” can refer to temperature as well, and “spicy” covers everything from “pleasantly cinnamon-y” to “ghost-pepper-mouth-on-fire.” Much more precise to say picante.

English tends to gobble up useful foreign words, like schadenfreude, a German word for joy in the misfortunes of others. This one has been employed by English-speakers since the 19th century and appears in several dictionaries, so it may well be considered part of the English language and not a loanword anymore. 

Hygge – Danish for a feeling of contentment engendered by comfort and coziness – has also started appearing in English dictionaries. Dozens of books have been published in recent years extolling the Scandinavian virtues of good friends, warm beverages, and candlelight, but hygge is so hard to pronounce (“higga”? “hoo-gah”? actually something like “hue-gah”) that it may never be as useful as schadenfreude, even though it is a far nicer idea.

Some wonderful words are not even knocking on the door of English, however. Firgun is found in modern Hebrew and means “tooting someone else’s horn,” making it roughly the opposite of schadenfreude. If you compliment someone for form’s sake but don’t mean it, that’s not firgun. You must be genuinely happy for the success of others, feeling an “empathetic joy” in their good fortune.

There are two Japanese words that, I would argue, we should import into English right away. Wabi-sabi expresses the beauty of imperfection, simplicity, and transience. A bowl possessing wabi-sabi might be tarnished, cracked, or not perfectly round, but these “flaws” impart to it a melancholy beauty because they reveal both its history and its impermanence. 

Shibui is a related term, describing “an aesthetic that only time can reveal,” as Christopher Moore writes in his book “In Other Words: An Illustrated Miscellany of the World’s Most Intriguing Words and Phrases.” A vintage jacket, a classic car, a restaurant that has been serving the same delicious omelets for 40 years, all demonstrate shibui; the latest iPhone and angular houses full of stainless steel do not. 

Shibui captures the idea, Moore explains, that as we age and accumulate experience, “we radiate with a beauty that stems from becoming fully ourselves.” As a person who has been marked by a fair bit of experience, I hope these two words make it into English dictionaries as soon as possible.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Borrowed words spice up English
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/In-a-Word/2018/1025/Borrowed-words-spice-up-English
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe