Interestingly there are some words in the German language that don’t have a one to one correspondence in English. When using them in a translation, these words leave you unsatisfied, longing for better phrases to describe the feeling.

Here are two examples of German words that I struggle with to translate:

• Geborgenheit – the feeling of belonging, safety and protection
• Gemuetlichkeit – the state that occurs when hanging out with friends or family and having a good time – but not in a loud way.  Also includes a feeling of warmth. (I made these definitions up, there might be better definitions out there).

Of course there are also cases, where the English language has adopted a German word. Examples include Zeitgeit, and Waldsterben (less used these days – hey, we Texans still struggle with the concept of climate change 😉 – I digress. ). But more often the opposite is taking place – the German language integrating English words into the common usage.

On a philosophical level it is interesting to explore what “thought space” a language is able to describe. If you think of language as manifestation of thoughts (which I believe is not the only way thoughts can exist) then there are things or concepts that people speaking a certain language cannot sufficiently describe. I know people have studied tribe languages to determine how far along they where developed. I’m not convinced that there’s a true hierarchy of languages – maybe just sets of languages with varying degree of overlap. For example the native Indian tribes of america had many many ways to describe phenomena’s of nature. Our western world languages seem to have rubbed off of each other enough that the overlap is almost 100%. But traveling to Africa or East Asia will open a language space that is unknown to the western world. (Unfortunately I don’t know enough about that yet to write about it in an intelligent way – but maybe in the future …).

Back to the thought that German has words for “Gemuetlichkeit” and “Geborgenheit” while the English language has not, strikes me as one of the German oddities. After all the German’s aren’t known for their warmth but for their efficiency and bluntness. But having grown up in Germany I’ve come to know and experience that the private side of being German actually does include these cozy warm fuzzy feelings as well. They are usually just well hidden from the public eye. Germans are private people.