I\u2019m blessed to have family, friends, and coworkers from all over the world, and I love discovering words from their languages that have no English equivalent. They reveal what a culture finds important, and they may even shape how we see: Russian has separate words for light and dark blue, and experiments show the split helps Russian speakers tell those shades apart faster. In other words (pun intended), words are the tokens that make up your model of the world and shape how you perceive it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So why not borrow a few and expand how you see the world? Here are my 10 favorites and where I find them useful, from making things to living life with other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1. Fingerspitzengef\u00fchl:<\/strong> (German) literally translates to \u201cfingertip feeling.\u201d A fine sense of judgement which comes from years of experience building up tacit knowledge needed for delicate craftsmanship, like fixing a watch, machining metal, growing plants, or in my line of work: engineering cell lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Genchi genbutsu:<\/strong> (Japanese) literally translates to \u201cactual place, actual thing,\u201d and is a core Toyota principle. It refers to physically handling and examining the actual material, equipment, or defective product itself, rather than relying solely on secondhand information like photographs, spreadsheets, or written reports. I like to tell my team to \u201cgo and see for yourself\u201d in the customer\u2019s lab. Instead of sitting in an office reading reports or having remote discovery interviews, we need to go to the shop floor where the actual work is being done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Nemawashi:<\/strong> (Japanese) refers to the concept of building support with individual stakeholders before making a formal decision in a bigger meeting. It literally means \u201cgoing around the roots\u201d: before transplanting a tree, gardeners dig around it and trim its roots so it survives the move. Investing in laying down the groundwork of building consensus will slow you down at first but once you have consensus you can move more quickly as a team. I\u2019ve come full circle, from adventures with Japanese high school friends to now getting to work with Japanese companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Sisu:<\/strong> (Finnish) represents stoic determination, grit, bravery, and resilience in the face of adversity. My wife, like me, has lived on three different continents. I admire her sisu for jumping through embassy hoops, weathering visa delays, and enduring the cold Finland winters. A closely related English word is \u201cstubborn,\u201d which has been deleted from my personal vocabulary for a happy marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 5. Omoshiroi:<\/strong> (Japanese) means funny, interesting, and amusing, all at the same time. Humor is the fastest way to make a friend. Moving to Japan as a teenager, I found it omoshiroi that one word covers what English splits into several.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 6. Gezellig:<\/strong> (Dutch) conjures the warm, cozy feeling of being with friends or family. Unlike \u201ccozy,\u201d it emphasizes that feeling that comes from hanging out together with good people. I grew up in the Netherlands, and nothing is more gezellig to me than a good hang with my childhood friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 7. Jam karet:<\/strong> (Indonesian) translates to \u201crubber time.\u201d It describes a flexible interpretation of time. I find this perspective comes in handy when I\u2019m running late but is not always appreciated by the other party waiting on you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 8. Gemas:<\/strong> (Indonesian) is the overwhelming urge to violently squeeze something because it is unbearably cute, like a baby. This is one of my new favorite words having become a dad recently. I\u2019ve been told there\u2019s a Filipino word gigil which means the same thing. I think that word is even better. It makes me giggle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 9. Saudade:<\/strong> (Portuguese) denotes a deep longing for an absent person, place, or time. It combines love, loss, memory, and longing in a way that \u201cnostalgia\u201d does not fully capture. This word conjures up a time when I was a younger man, flying into Portugal to attend my good friend\u2019s wedding, dancing till late in the evening. Cue \u201c1979\u201d by the Smashing Pumpkins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 10. Mir:<\/strong> (Russian) means both \u201cpeace\u201d and \u201cworld.\u201d Hence the Mir Space Station, named to symbolize peace and the global community. \u201cPeace\u201d and \u201cworld\u201d were actually spelled differently (\u043c\u0438\u0440\u044a vs. \u043c\u0456\u0440\u044a) and considered separate words until a spelling reform dropped the distinction in 1918. The two words always sounded the same, but the merger made the phrase \u201cmiru mir\u201d (\u201cpeace to the world\u201d) a pun you can see on paper, to the amusement of many Russian dads. I like to think I help push towards world peace, in my own small way, through building an international company, global family, and a more worldly lexicon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What other words should I know about? Let me know in your internet community of choice: LinkedIn, Hacker News<\/a>, or X<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m blessed to have family, friends, and coworkers from all over the world, and I love discovering words from their languages that have no English equivalent. 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