Rigors of Translating the Indescribable

I have a love for finding words in different languages that don't have a competent English translation. I found this page tonight that was just a blog of people discussing their favorite ones. Things like this remind me why I loved Spanish once upon a time. I feel like by learning a language intimately, I will somehow know in a moment its personal history of development as thoroughly as I know mine - all of its twists and turns, deep sighs and raucous laughs, I watch it transform into something so fluid and beautiful that it can express the thoughts of Pablo Neruda, Nietzsche, and Tolstoy. Its idioms are its passions, its grammar - its quirks, and its cadence and accents are its temperament. It's the personality of a culture - it's part of everyone's personality. Languages are gregarious and rich and so alive that to never speak them again is death. When words slip from your mouth in the perfect combination, you can almost feel their texture in the roll of your tongue and shape of your lips, like they're more than just symbols for an object, but actual objects themselves, unique to every language. Above all, they are frustratingly complex and so beyond the realm of beauty because they are able to bring forth our abstract thoughts into the world. They are the mediators between emotions and communication.

Languages are a culture's adjectives. Almost. Ergh, that's redundant, isn't it? Either way I love adjectives, maybe that's why I find myself so enamored with languages and writing and describing my thoughts and opinions in general. When I was in Spain, I sorely missed the plethora of adjectives at my easy disposal. I never realized how much I valued them until all I could quickly and cogently come up with were bueno, bonita, guapo, rico, and mal. Has anyone tried looking for the Spanish equivalent for creepy? The closest I came was their word for horrifying. Or, what about trying to translate the flippancy but frustration of the phrase "never mind". Or convey to a sensitive Spanish mother the neutrality of the word fine when you're describing how you liked dinner. There's a finesse to a language that only comes with a native's experience. I suppose this isn't quite so much of a problem for people who are fine with just communicating the essentials, but for me, not being able to describe something to my liking can drive me insane.


A Small List:

Fernweh - the longing to be far away, not to be confused with (German)
Wanderlust - the longing to travel (German)
Appel du vide - "the call of the void", the urge to jump from high places (French)
Hyggelig - instantly satisfying and cozy (Danish)
Toska - "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." (Russian)
Mokita - the truth which no one speaks
Gezellig - it refers to an ambiance that is achieved with friends, food, drink, lighting, music, etc. (Dutch)
ديوان (diiwaan) - "can mean 'account books' or 'anthology' or 'oeuvre', but one of the more difficult meanings of the term to translate is 'collective poetic or literary tradition of a people' " (Arabic)