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Are there things which can't be said in English? ~websafe
As coincidence would have it, in his weekly commentary on the NPR program "Fresh Air," Geoff Nunberg addresses the concept of words and concepts, whence this quote:
"The fact is that people have plenty of concepts that their language doesn't happen to have a single word for. Take the German word Schadenfreude, which denotes the pleasure we take in the misfortunes of others. True, it's a nice item to have handy in a pre-packaged form. But that doesn't mean that Red Sox fans have to learn German before they can enjoy watching the Yankees lose eight straight at home."
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/~nunberg/compromise.html
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