From Mother
Tongue - English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson:
…on the
other hand, other languages have facilities we lack. Both French and German can
distinguish between knowledge that results from recognition (respectively connaitre
and kennen) and knowledge that results from understanding (savoir and wissen).
Portuguese has words that differentiate between an interior angle and an
exterior one. All the Romance languages can distinguish between something that
leaks into and something that leaks out of. The Italians even have a word for
the mark left on a table by a moist glass (culacino) while the Gaelic speakers
of Scotland, not to be outdone, have a word for the itchiness that overcomes
the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. (Wouldn't they just?) It's
sgriob. And we have nothing in English to match the Danish hygge (meaning
"instantly satisfying and cozy"), the French sangfroid, the Russian
glasnost, or the Spanish macho, so we must borrow the term from them or do without
the sentiment.
At the same
time, some languages have words that we may be pleased to do without. The
existence in German of a word like schadenfreude (taking delight in the
misfortune of others) perhaps tells us as much about Teutonic sensitivity as it
does about their neologistic versatility. Much the same could be said about the
curious and monumentally unpronounceable Highland Scottish word sgiomlaireachd,
which means "the habit of dropping in at mealtimes. " That surely
conveys a world of information about the hazards of Highland life-not to
mention the hazards of Highland orthography.
Of course,
every language has areas in which it needs, for practical purposes, to be more
expressive than others. The Eskimos, as is well known, have fifty words for
types of snow-though curiously no word for just plain snow. To them there is
crunchy snow, soft snow, fresh snow, and old snow, but no word that just means
snow. The Italians, as we might expect, have over 500 names for different types
of macaroni. Some of these, when translated, begin to sound distinctly
unappetizing, like strozzapreti, which means "strangled priests. "
Vermicelli means "little worms" and even spaghetti means "little
strings." When you learn that muscatel in Italian means "wine with
flies in it," you may conclude that the Italians are gastronomically out
to lunch, so to speak, but really their names for foodstuffs are no more
disgusting than our hot dogs or those old English favorites, toad-in-the-hole,
spotted dick, and faggots in gravy.
The
residents of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea have a hundred words for
yams, while the Maoris of New Zealand have thirty-five words for dung (don't
ask me why).
Meanwhile,
the Arabs are said (a little unbelievably, perhaps) to have 6,000 words for
camels and camel equipment. The aborigines of Tasmania have a word for every
type of tree, but no word that just means "tree," while the
Araucanian Indians of Chile rather more poignantly have a variety of words to
distinguish between different degrees of hunger. Even among speakers of the
same language, regional and national differences abound. A Londoner has a less
comprehensive view of extremes of weather than someone from the Middle West of
America. What a Briton calls a blizzard would, in Illinois or Nebraska, be a
flurry, and a British heat wave is often a thing of merriment to much of the
rest of the world. (I still treasure a London newspaper with the banner
headline: BRITAIN SIZZLES IN THE SEVENTIES!)
A second
commonly cited factor in setting English apart from other languages is its
flexibility. This is particularly true of word ordering, where English speakers
can roam with considerable freedom between passive and active senses. Not only
can we say "I kicked the dog," but also "The dog was kicked by
me" - a construction that would be impossible in many other languages.
Similarly, where the Germans can say just "ich singe" and the French must
manage with "je chante," we can say "I sing," "I do
sing," or "I am singing."