Together, Waldeinsamkeit literally translates to “solitude in the forest,” but that literal translation loses much of the word’s poetry. Waldeinsamkeit combines Wald (“wood”) and Einsamkeit (“loneliness”).
So, we think it would be wunderbar (“wonderful”) if English embraced these nine (not nein!) German gems. German is also famous for what are sometimes called untranslatables: single words whose definitions are wonderfully specific or complex enough that, when translated into another language, they require numerous words to express the same idea.īut, many of these intimidating German terms actually pack in some truly amazing concepts-all in a single word. What’s more, many familiar English words, from angst to kindergarten to schadenfreude, are borrowed directly from German. Historically, the two languages are closely related in core vocabulary (compare English arm and German der Arm), sound system, and structure (if we look at Old English grammar). But, it’s easy to forget that English is a Germanic language.
German can indeed be daunting to English speakers, with its mile-long mouthfuls like Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaft (“a legal protection insurance company”). As Mark Twain famously wrote in a hilarious 1880 essay about his struggle to learn German: “A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what a perplexing language it is.”
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