The unbearable lygge of borrowing & lending

It is said that the popularity of the Danish word hygge (pronounced hoo-gah) meaning a warm, fuzzy feeling of comfort led to a spate of fluffy products to promote that emotional state.

Now there is a move to promote lygge (yes, loo-kah) which means happiness in the same language, though it is uncertain whether products will also follow. Still, the experience of hygge and lygge demonstrate the ease with which succinct, untranslatable words from languages can be used to create a zeitgeist – another evocative borrowed word – instead of fumbling for inadequate equivalents in our native tongues.

Other words worthy of being adopted include kummerspeck, German for emotional (over)-eating, literally translated as ‘grief bacon’, sombremsa’, a Spanish word sitting around chatting long after a meal has finished and ‘gigil’ the Tagalog (Filipino) word for a rather Indian weakness—the urge to pinch or squeeze unbearably cute creatures or objects. A quintessentially Korean word nunchi or the ability to gauge others’ moods—in other words, emotional intelligence –could do with a wider dissemination too, perhaps starting with a certain North Korean. Indian languages have their share of untranslatable words reflecting our concerns, most famously jootha and jugaad. It is time we start borrowing – and lending— appropriate words too.