Jul 13, 2023
To:IceDonut
Ooooh word trivia is my favorite though!! I really enjoy learning about other languages 🤣 I feel like it helps broaden my concepts of writing, to know the roots of words and how other languages handle them.
I like your idea of graduations. I think "You're the worst" might be a good replacement here in my story, because that's really what Mia is feeling. Funnily enough though, using curse words like saying "f you dad!!" (at least where I live) would be more hurtful than saying "I hate you!", so regional impact is something that makes this complicated 🤣 I've chosen not to use curse words directly as a personal choice for this novel. (I don't mind curse words in stories, and might use them in a different novel. But for this particular story, I just didn't feel like curse words really felt right.)
Hmm, my knowledge is admittedly limited in German -- I had a friend in High School who studied German a lot and did Study Abroad as well as Student Exchanges, so we frequently had German students visiting our school and I tried to pick up some of the language so we could be friends! But my knowledge is far from perfect 🤣 I remember once seeing a list my friend sent me of all the different types and words for "love" in German and being amazed...but that is just a list! That does not mean the words are commonly used. English also has a lot of words for "love" but many of them are borrowed from Greek or other languages, and are not commonly used (as in: agape, eros, philia, storge, xenia.) So although technically English has a lot of words for "love" they are not always used. That may be similar to the German list I saw.
But all the examples you listed (like Zweisamkeit, Einsamkeit, Vertrautheit) all have very unique meanings that do not perfectly translate to English. I sometimes wish I could borrow words from other languages and write a big multi-lingual novel!! 😆 Kopfkino, Treppenwitz, and Gemütlich are some of my favorite words/concepts I learned from my study-abroad friends that did not translate to English. But sadly, I am not very good at picking up foreign languages (my lowest scoring subject in school was always my language classes OTL) ...you could say I do not have sprachgefühl 😭 but I try!
