Today’s word of the day, courtesy of the Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary) is weltanschauung. It’s pronounced / ˈvɛltˌɑnˌʃaʊ ʊŋ /, with a secondary stress on the third syllable. You may notice that the IPA spelling begins with a v. That’s because the word is actually a Deutsch word, not an English word. It has been borrowed from German directly, with virtually no Anglicizing. It means “worldview” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/weltanschauung?q=Weltanschauung).

It first appears in English in “1868 (William James), from German Weltanschauung, from welt ‘world’ (see world) + anschauung ‘perception’ (the core of which is related to English show),” and in that appearance it meant “philosophical view of life” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/weltanschauung).

The website goes on to explain show: “Middle English sheuen, from Old English sceawian ‘to look at, see, gaze, behold, observe; inspect, examine; look for, choose,’ from Proto-Germanic *skauwojanan (source also of Old Saxon skauwon ‘to look at,’ Old Frisian skawia, Dutch schouwen, Old High German scouwon ‘to look at’), from Proto-Germanic root *skau- ‘behold, look at,’ from PIE *skou-, variant of root *keu- ‘to see, observe, perceive.’
“The causal meaning ‘let be seen; put in sight, make known’ evolved c. 1200 for unknown reasons, seems to be unique to English (German schauen still means ‘look at’), and in a century displaced the older meaning. The sense of ‘explain, make clear’ is from c. 1300, as the intransitive sense of ‘be seen, appear.’
“The spelling shew, popular 18c. and surviving into early 19c., represents an obsolete pronunciation (rhymes with view). The horse-racing sense of ‘finish third or in the top three’ is by 1903, perhaps from an earlier sense in card-playing” (ibid.). Interestingly, for those of us old enough, we can remember a person from the twentieth century who did say shew. That would be Ed Sullivan, of the Ed Sullivan Show. He would regularly start his variety show with “We have a really good shew.”

Merriam-Webster, in its Did You Know section, says, “The German word Weltanschauung literally means ‘world view’; it combines Welt, meaning ‘world,’ with Anschauung, meaning ‘view.’ (You might have noticed this word’s resemblance to another German borrowing, weltschmerz, meaning ‘world-weariness’ or ‘world-pain’). When English speakers first adopted Weltanschauung in the mid-19th century, it referred to a philosophical view or apprehension of the universe, and this sense is still the most widely used. It can also describe a more general ideology or philosophy of life. Note that the word is typically capitalized in English, as all nouns are in German” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Weltanschauung).

I’ve always heard that Weltanschauung is a Deutsch word that does not have a clear translation in English. One of the issues is that Deutsch is a fusional language with agglutinative characteristics. A fusional language is an inflected language, in which specific morphemes (language bits) are used to indicate number, tense, and gender. “Agglutination is a morphological process where languages build complex words by stacking meaningful pieces onto a root word” (https://lingopie.com/blog/what-is-an-agglutinative-language/). What Deutsch does is string words together to form other words. Weltanschauung is made up of Welt and Anschauung, as mentioned above.

But there are other words that are supposedly difficult to translate. For instance, “Gemütlichkeit is a German-language word used to convey the idea of a state or feeling of warmth, friendliness,^[1] and good cheer. Other qualities encompassed by the term include cosiness, peace of mind, and a sense of belonging and well-being springing from social acceptance” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gem%C3%BCtlichkeit). “The communal connotations of Gemütlichkeit are also emphasized in some uses of the term. For example, one academic described it as a tradition of ‘public festivity’ (in the form of a ‘mixture of music, food, and drink’), which ‘promote[d] community solidarity’” (ibid.). A restaurant called Schmidt’s says, “Gemütlichkeit is a German word with no perfect English translation. It describes a warm, cozy, and welcoming atmosphere—like the feeling of being surrounded by friends, good food, and laughter” (https://schmidthaus.com/realgermanfoodblog/the-meaning-of-gemutlichkeit-more-than-just-a-feeling).

“Perhaps the most famous example of a German word without an equivalent in many other languages, ‘Schadenfreude’ refers to ‘pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’. Both the word itself and its meaning have been adopted by many other languages, including English. It stems from a combination of the German words ‘Schaden’, meaning ‘harm’, and ‘Freude’, meaning ‘joy’; so a literal translation would be ‘harm-joy’” (https://www.lingoda.com/blog/en/german-words-that-are-impossible-to-translate/).

That lingoda webpage has seven other words that it says are impossible to translate. I’ll just give a few. If “you have ever thought of a witty remark, or the perfect response to win a debate, but the remark or response came to you about 20 minutes too late, you have experienced what the Germans call ‘Treppenwitz’. The word is created from the words ‘Treppen’ (stairs) and ‘Witz’ (wit), so directly translates to ‘staircase wit’. It is used to describe any idea or course of action that occurs to you too late to be used effectively” (ibid.).

“Combining ‘Erklärung,’ meaning ‘explanation’, and ‘Not’, meaning ‘emergency’, the German word ‘Erklärungsnot’ refers to a situation where you have a lot of explaining to do. More specifically, it refers to the state of having to come up with a credible explanation very quickly, in order to justify your actions. You may experience this if you have been caught lying, or if you need an excuse for not doing something you were supposed to” (ibid.). Just think if Ricky had come into the house and just yelled, “Lucy, you got Erklärungsnot.”

“While the English language has a word for ‘Heimweh’, or ‘homesickness’, it does not have an equivalent word for ‘Fernweh’, which is essentially the opposite. ‘Fernweh’ describes a longing to see and experience distant places, as well as a sadness when not doing so. It is somewhat similar to the concept of ‘Wanderlust’, which describes ‘an irresistible impulse to travel’, but ‘Fernweh’ is a more negative emotion, resembling depression” (ibid.). I think this might describe my wife when we haven’t gone on a cruise for a few months.

Finally, “Formed from the words ‘Schnaps’ (alcohol or liquor) and ‘Idee’ (idea), a ‘Schnapsidee’ is the sort of terrible idea that seems sensible only when intoxicated. It can be used to describe a literal bad idea that was formulated when drunk, but also to describe an idea that is so bad that only a drunk person could ever think was good” (ibid.). I really like this word. There should also be a word for the great writing that one does when one is pulling an all-nighter, only to discover that the text is incomprehensible.

One of the things about the English language that I really like is how open it is. For centuries, the French have had the Académie Française, an organization that oversees the French language. And when I say “oversees,” what I mean is that it, in part, determines what words are permitted to become part of the language, and what words are not. Deutschland and Italia have had a similar impulse: “the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft or “Fruitbearing Society”, the first German literary association, was founded in Weimar in 1617. Inspired by the Accademia della Crusca down in Florence, a handful of patriotically-minded German noblemen got together to practise vernacular German in poetry and equip the nascent language with the superior linguistic capabilities of Latin and French for wider supra-regional use. The Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft and a few other language societies soon began proposing German terms to supplant mostly Latinate loanwords: the suggestions included some less convincing coinages, like Tageleuchter (literally, “day-glower”) for Fenster (window) and Zitterweh (“shiver-ache”) for Fieber (fever)“ (https://www.goethe.de/prj/ger/en/kre/spk/22302864.html). And while there have been writers and academics, such as Jonathan Swift, who have proposed that English needs such a society or academy, one has never come into being.

As a result, English has been free throughout its history to borrow freely from many, many languages. The obvious ones are French (because of the Norman Conquest) and Latin (because of the church). But the borrowing has continued: Native American languages (moose); Asian languages (karate); Spanish (taco), and many, many more. So it shouldn’t be a problem to not worry about a direct translation of these Deutsch words like Weltanschauung; we can just borrow it wholesale, along with terms like Schnapsidee.

Or maybe you think such a proposal is itself an Schanpidee.

For today’s image, I decided to ignore the word of the day and go with Gemutlichkeit. I hope you don’t mind, but the only thing the image gets wrong is the kind of household pet shown (https://www.lingoda.com/blog/en/german-gemuetlichkeit/).