Hi folks,
If this post doesn't already make sense, refer back to last Tuesday's post, and follow the chain back to the first entry from this series.
For the initiated, let's have a first look at the final four:
Missing the medal stand
4) Warmduscher (German) – noun, refers to someone who would only take a warm shower (not an icy cold or burning hot one), implying that they are a bit of a wimp, and unwilling to step outside of their comfort zone.
On my list, I think there is only room for one word of this type - the playful zinger, let's call it - but what a zinger! I'd say if someone pointed at a stranger and told me the person was a warmduscher, I would have a pretty good read of that person - wouldn't you? The very fact of this word makes me want to move to Germany and start accusing people of being warmduschers.
In some ways, this word represents the point of Lost In Translation better than any other in the book. It cuts right across the communication barrier of language in a way not achieved by many other translated words. Think about how many misunderstandings or little speculations you might need in the process of describing this kind of person, and then compare it to the communication efficiency of using the one word - warmduscher. Who wouldn't understand? In just one word, you can describe a certain type of person to almost anyone, and connect with others in a way that epitomizes the most powerful use of language.
(As a side note, I've spent the last few minutes trying to think of my own version of warmduscher. I think the word we need would describe a dining companion who wouldn't tell you that you have food on your face - let's say a drop of ketchup, for this example. Ketchupduscher? I'm working on it.)
Bronze medal
3) Komorebi (Japanese) – noun, the sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees.
There was an early spring iteration of this list that ranked komorebi #1, but perhaps I had gone too long without seeing the phenomenon; I also suspect words that describe a specific thing tend to lose ground in revision. I'll speculate that the pandemic played a surprising role in this change because one silver lining on the (very dark) cloud of COVID-19 is the way it forced many people to slow down and live life at a more leisurely pace. In the past, I used to think komorebi was a very useful way for people to assess their speed - if you never noticed the sunlight filtering through the leaves, you were walking too fast, or needed to make time to sit under a tree. I don't think this is as true anymore.
For those who are still chuckling to themselves about warmduscher (or are feeling flushed, in the embarrassed spirit of self-recognition) I will justify this #3 ranking by pointing out that I feel most people reach an inflection point in life when their concern expands a little bit past the limit of individual comprehension; the rest of life is a futile attempt to close this gap. In other words, at some point you start to see things that may or may not always have been there in your surroundings. When my mom died, I saw the sun, the sky, and the leaves a little differently, at least on certain days; I realized that komorebi had finally translated for me. It's a subtle theme in Lost In Translation, but an important one - sometimes the barrier to understanding is not a lack of language skill, but of life experience.
Championship Game
We're left with two words, listed here in alphabetical order.
Hiraeth (Welsh) – noun, a homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and the grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.
Iktsuarpok (Inuit) – noun, the act of repeatedly going outside to keep checking if someone (anyone) is coming.
All to be settled next Friday!
Thanks for reading.
