There’s a bench exterior my constructing in Bangkok, underneath a tree I couldn’t determine in the event you paid me. Late afternoon, the solar comes by way of the leaves in shifting patches, and for ten minutes the pavement appears to be like like one thing price badly photographing on a cellphone.
I sat on that bench for 2 years earlier than I realized there was a phrase for it. Japanese has 木漏れ日, komorebi: daylight leaking by way of the gaps between leaves and branches. English wants a full sentence and a run-up.
Right here is the half that caught with me. I began noticing the sunshine extra typically as soon as I had the phrase for it.
A dictionary seen the identical factor
I’m not the primary to get caught on this. In its March 2025 replace, the Oxford English Dictionary added a batch of borrowed phrases and used komorebi as its instance of the hole it wished to fill. Wouldn’t it’s useful, they requested, to have one phrase for dappled mild by way of leaves? Or one for sitting exterior having fun with a beer, which Norwegian manages in seven letters: utepils.
In addition they made a degree that will get misplaced within the listicles about lovely untranslatable phrases. Nothing is really unimaginable to translate. An honest translator can render komorebi in English all day. What makes these phrases attention-grabbing is that one language has bothered to compress the thought right into a single unit and one other has not.
That could be a smaller declare than the paranormal model. It is usually extra helpful, as a result of compression is one thing you possibly can copy.
Gigil acquired in earlier than I did
In that very same replace, the OED added eleven phrases from the Philippines. One among them was gigil.
I grew up with gigil in Manila. It’s what you’re feeling one thing unbearably cute, a fat-cheeked child or a small aggressive kitten, and it arrives as a bodily urge: clenched fingers, gritted tooth, the necessity to squeeze the factor. The OED dates its use in Philippine English to at the very least 1990.
What I keep in mind is boarding college in Australia, aged 13, attempting to clarify gigil to a room of youngsters who had by no means wanted the idea. I ended up miming it. They thought I used to be describing a cramp.
The sensation was equivalent in each nations. Solely one in every of us might say it in two syllables.
Does having the phrase change what you see?
That is the place I’ve to watch out, as a result of the favored model of this concept is oversold.
The tidiest proof comes from blue. Russian has no single umbrella phrase for it. Lighter blues are goluboy, darker blues are siniy, and Russian audio system can not dodge the excellence the best way English audio system can.
A 2007 research in PNAS requested each teams to choose which of two blue squares matched a 3rd. Russian audio system have been faster when the squares fell both facet of their language’s boundary. English audio system, given equivalent squares, acquired no such increase.
Better of all, the benefit vanished when individuals needed to silently rehearse an eight-digit quantity whereas they labored. Tie up the phrases and the impact goes with them, which suggests the language was doing reside work somewhat than having rewired anybody’s eyes.
Then a 2020 re-run in Cognition repeated the duties and located the impact had actual limits. So the query remains to be reside: language nudges consideration, however it doesn’t set up new {hardware}.
A nudge remains to be price having.
Naming a sense takes the sting off it
There’s a second strand of analysis right here, and this one I take advantage of.
A UCLA group ran an fMRI research, printed in 2007, the place folks checked out offended and frightened faces. Once they merely seemed, the amygdala lit up. The amygdala is the little bit of the mind that handles menace, the smoke alarm. Once they picked a phrase for the emotion as an alternative, the alarm quieted down and a area behind the brow related to deliberate considering grew to become extra energetic.
Researchers name this have an effect on labelling. In plain phrases, placing a sense into phrases appears to show the quantity down on it.
One imaging research is one imaging research, and small fMRI samples deserve warning. However it matches one thing I’ve discovered dependable. “I really feel terrible” sits in your chest all day. “I’m embarrassed about how I dealt with that cellphone name” is smaller, extra particular, and has an apparent subsequent transfer. Precision shrinks issues.
Learn how to borrow properly
The psychologist Tim Lomas has spent years accumulating phrases like this. His 2016 paper catalogued 216 untranslatable phrases referring to wellbeing, sorted into emotions, relationships and character, and the checklist has since grown previous 600. It’s a good place to raid.
My rule for maintaining one is straightforward: it has to call a sense I have already got and wrestle to explain properly. Thai has sabsung, the elevate you get from one thing that revives you. I take advantage of that one, as a result of I wanted it. I’ve quietly dropped a dozen prettier phrases that I used to be accumulating somewhat than utilizing, which is a passion, not a follow.
Two issues make it stick. Say it out loud to somebody, which forces you to outline it and doubles as first rate dialog. And when no borrowed phrase suits, invent one. Households do that always. Each household I’ve recognized has a non-public time period for some particular home irritation, and people work in addition to those in Oxford.
Again to the bench. The tree remains to be unidentified and the sunshine nonetheless arrives round half 4. The distinction is that I search for now.
