All languages are different. There are things I can say in my native Swedish that I can't in English, and vice versa, despite English and Swedish actually being quite closely related (relatively speaking). Have you spotted any useful words or expressions that exist in another language but are absent from English, or words that are used in English but lack an equivalent in another language you speak? Let's hear them!
Eino Kenttä
gardener
Posts: 801
Location: Semi-nomadic, main place coastal mid-Norway, latitude 64 north
I'll start. I think English is lacking an elegant way to say a day and a night or 24 hours. You just say "a day", and let people figure out from context whether you mean the whole 24, or the part of them when the sun's up, or 12 hours, or...
In Swedish, we have separate words for this. Dygn refers to a full 24 hours, while dag covers the rest of the meaning of English "day".
I love the word saudade, which is Portuguese and means the same as hiraeth in Welsh. There is no equivalent word in English, and I'm not sure there is in any other language either. It means a longing for what is lost, leaning more towards land in Welsh and people or things in Portuguese.