Like most "language X has no word for Y" or "language X has a thousand words for Y" claims, it's true in a trivial sense and false in a practical sense. Yes, t

Like most "language X has no word for Y" or "language X has a thousand words for Y" claims, it's true in a trivial sense and false in a practical sense. Yes, there is no exact translation for "mind" that carries with it every contextual sense the word can have in English. Word-for-word translations generally don't work very well in any pair of languages. German does however have plenty of words that have the same meaning as "mind" when used in the same context: Bewusstsein (consciousness), Verstand (reason), Geist (spirit/intellect), Gedanken (thoughts), Gehirn (brain), Meinung (opinion), Phantasie (imagination), Denkweise (way of thinking), Gemüt (disposition) and so on. So does German have no word for "mind" or a dozen? Daniel Dennett created a nice word for such claims: "deepity". A statement that seems insightful (deep) at first but turns out to be trivial if you spend a few seconds reflecting on it. German doesn't have a word for "mind" because it's an English word and there's a dozen words that already express the same ideas in every possible context. If you find a concrete context in which there is no word sufficiently expressing the same idea, that's when you create a new one or borrow one: like zeitgeist, a German word that could just as well have been translated as "spirit of the times" or angst, another German word that literally means fear or dread.