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German here. "Schaden" in this case means harm or damage or misfortune (which causes someone else's joy). It can mean pity in other contexts, though, as in "tha
by thomas11 16y ago
German here. "Schaden" in this case means harm or damage or misfortune (which causes someone else's joy). It can mean pity in other contexts, though, as in "that's a pity".
A nice example of an undecomposable word in German that has no ready, handy English cognate is Gemütlichkeit. From Wikipedia: "Its closest equivalent is the word "coziness"; however, [...] Gemütlichkeit connotes the notion of belonging, social acceptance, cheerfulness, the absence of anything hectic and the opportunity to spend quality time."
- eru 16y agoOr how about the humble "Brot"? No German would recognize what you get sold as "bread" in Britain as proper "Brot".
- igravious 16y agoThanks for that clarification. I was going by my rusty German and Google translate :) Gemütlichkeit sounds like a great word. So German and grand. An interesting word on the list from the page of the article is Dépaysement ... meaning "The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country" which if you squint closely is un-country-ness in English which indeed sounds odd. But we do we the word _discplacement_ which could be overloaded with this typically gallic connotation.
- theclay 16y agoHow do we distinguish Dépaysement from alienated?
- theclay 16y agoGemütlichkeit sounds a lot like fellowship to me.