The beauty of words

If you speak another language at any level, you know that there are certain words that are nearly impossible to translate into another language, at least not with one, perfectly fitting word.

I often say that my ideal conversation partner is someone who can speak the languages that I speak, this way we can always find the proper expressions for our thoughts and ideas. Of course, I am not talking about conveniently using the word that first comes to one’s mind when the right word actually exists in the language of the conversation – I respect languages way too much to endorse that, but when a language captures a phenomenon, common characteristic or other culturally specific occurrence in a perfect, almost poetic way that you will need a deep understanding of the culture and language to truly capture its meaning.

If you would like to learn a few interesting examples of these gems, visit this article about how Designer Anjana Iyer's artwork seeks to explain untranslatable words from non-English languages.