![]() “specifically” / “intentionally” / “of all things”ĭepending on the context, this adverb can be used to emphasize something in contrast to something else, to denote something that is not necessarily expected, or even to specify something done out of spite. “Why can’t you be happy for me over the promotion instead of being jealous?” Lamah atah lo yakhol lefargen li ‘al ha-ha’ala’ah bimkom lekane? This Hebrew verb refers to a state in which one enjoys and delights in another’s successes. This one is approximately the opposite of Schadenfreude, the English loanword from German meaning to take delight in the suffering or setbacks of one’s enemy. “to delight in/congratulate/celebrate another’s success, achievements, etc.” Ha-yayin ha-zeh kol kakh ta’im, khaval ‘al ha-zman. This phrase is used as a superlative to describe something so good, bad, crazy, etc., that it would be a shame to waste time elaborating or going into detail about how good, bad, crazy, etc. “the time is a shame” / “a shame for the time” Let HebrewPod101 Help Translate the Untranslatable. ![]() Start with a bonus, and download the Must-Know Beginner Vocabulary PDF for FREE! (Logged-In Member Only) Table of Contents We’ll show you how to pronounce them, explain what they mean, and discuss when they should be used. This is simply because some things are, as the expression goes, lost in translation.īut rather than viewing this as an obstacle to acquiring a foreign language, why not celebrate the unique identity of each individual language and its special way of expressing the world around us? Today’s lesson will examine the top 10 Hebrew words with no English equivalent. If this were not true, why would languages borrow loanwords from one another? Clearly, in such cases, speakers of one language recognize that speakers of another have landed upon a nuanced idea or form of expression with no parallel in their native tongue. After all, as linguistic creatures, we humans not only use language to give expression to our thoughts it would seem that particular languages give rise to particular ways of thinking. One thing that seems universal, even in the case of languages that do pertain to the same language family, is that each language is highly unique. As you’ll see, untranslatable Hebrew words are one area where you’ll notice these distinctions. In the case of Hebrew and English, aside from a number of loanwords-a few words that entered English from Hebrew via the Old Testament and quite a number of English words adopted by Hebrew speakers in modernity-there’s little common ground between the two. This is especially true when the language you’re learning is linguistically unrelated to the one you already know. One of the wonderful things about studying a foreign language is that it’s not merely a matter of translating what you know from your mother tongue directly into the new language.
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