A
World of New Words
I’ve recently started learning German and
have discovered a whole world of new words; words which do not have an English
equivalent. This has led me to wonder how learning another language can help
improve our ability to express our feelings, and maybe even make us more aware
of those feelings in the first place.
For example, I’ve experienced weltschmerz for many years, but I never
had a nice neat word for it until now. The literal translation of weltschmerz
means ‘world-pain’, or world-weariness, and was coined by the German author,
Jean Paul Richter. It’s the feeling ‘experienced by someone who understands
that physical reality can never satisfy the demands of the mind’, or ‘the
feeling of sadness when thinking about the evils of the world’. Upon
discovering this word I felt a weight lifted from me; having a singular word
has helped me accept that feeling and it seems easier to deal with now that I
have a label for it in my mind and it’s not just some intangible experience.
