[DanaC]

I really love the German language. Always have. It's my favourite foreign language - I love its quirkiness, it's poetry and the way it feels to speak. I was watching this video about awesome German words that have no direct equivalent in English and which capture or express complex and specific feelings. I've heard it said many times that German is particularly well-qualified for capturing these difficult to express concepts and emotions. The same is often said of French - where a singlre word can capture whole something that English can't express.

I think there's a high degree of bollox to that. But I do not French to argue it in any kind of informed way :P I think the hang up on single words being able to express these complex and poetic concepts is missing the point when it comes to English - what we have isa language of ridiculous flexibility in expression and structure. You can play around with word order and meaning in staggering ways in English and still be coherent in a way that would collapse a sentence in many other languages. That it might take several words to say what another language could express in one doesn't make it less able to express that concept. For instance: Luftschloss = sky castle = unrealistic dream. That can be expressed in English - castles in the sky - and we all know what that means. Zeitgeist = time ghost = spirit of the time

But anyway - my point- inasmuch as I have one is that the video of awesome German words is pretty cool. But the only reason they are able to express these complex things in a single word is that they essentially just crush several words or a sentence together and call it a single word :P Which, it has to be said, is one of the things I love about German.