Undeniably a sacred language of our ancestors is extremely beautiful and rich. But even though we know with a handful of letters we can say everything, in some cases, we need a little more than that.
And when words are not enough, starts talking art. Mary…is an artist-Illustrator who creates drawings, describing those foreign words that are missing in our speech. A series of illustrations is called “Untranslatable words”, and some of them we present here:
1. Cafuné (Portuguese) – The act of tenderly running fingers through someone’s hair.
2. Gufra (Arabic) – The amount of water that can be held in a hand.
3. Duende (Spanish) – The mysterious power that a work of art hag to deeply move a person.
4. L’appel Duvide (French) – “The call of the void” is this expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from a high place.
5. Palegg (Norwegian) – Anything and everything that you can put on a slice of bread.
6. Baku-shan (Japanese) – А beautiful girl – as long as she is being viewed from behind.
7. Age-Otori (Japanese) – To look worse after a haircut.
8. Kyoikumama (Japanese) – A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement.
9. Tretar (Swedish) – On its own, “tar” means ”a cup of coffee” and ”patar” is the refill of said cup of coffee. A tretar is a second refill or “threefill”.
10. Tingo (pascuense; local language of inhabitants of Easter Island) – The act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.
11. Torschlusspanik (German) – ”Gate-closing panic”, or the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.
