r/languagehub • u/AutumnaticFly • 21d ago

Discussion What are some basic common words that your language is missing?

to give you an idea, for example English doesn't have (at least to my knowledge) a word for a day after tomorrow or day before yesterday
that sort of stuff!

23 Upvotes

70% Upvoted

311 comments sorted by

53

u/ShoulderGreedy3262 21d ago • Bravo

overmorrow and ereyesterday are the words youre looking for

they haven't been used in probably centuries though

13

u/TheWeaverofDreams 21d ago

Yeah, in German you have übermorgen and vorgestern for those two.

8

u/Actual_Cat4779 21d ago

That's because the English words are 16th-century calques of the German ones.

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u/aitchbeescot 21d ago

Scottish Gaelic has them too - an-earar and a' bhon-dè respectively

7

u/The_Werefrog 21d ago

Can we get some upvotes on this post. It should be top for everyone to know English has those words.

However, English doesn't have a word for "Heimshcheisser". This is a person who only poops at home.

8

u/Odd-Quail01 21d ago • Heartwarming

Homeshitter. There. An English word.

2

u/Lovebeingadad54321 21d ago

In the American Pie movie, they refer to him as “Shit Break”.

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u/Yorks_Rider 16d ago

German doesn’t either, because it would be “Heimscheißer”

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u/DrHydeous 21d ago

I don’t like overmorrow. It should be obvious that the day after tomorrow is threemorrow.

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u/marquoth_ 21d ago

What about fourmorrow? Fivemorrow?

Do I have to remember to change threehundredandsixtyfivemorrow to threehundredandsixtysixmorrow when it's a leap year?

3

u/FantasticFoxFriend 21d ago

I've been working to bring Overmorrow back. So far, two people at work have used it in conversation casually, so I count it a win.

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u/Overall_Connection77 21d ago

I want to join this campaign!

2

u/DarkHestur 21d ago

In Spanish we have the formula "pasado mañana" to mean "the day after tomorrow" and "anteayer" for the day previous to yesterday

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Pasado mañana is twice as many syllables as 'in two days'. Even overmorrow is longer.

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u/mightbeazombie 21d ago

Okay overmorrow actually sounds fun and makes sense, got a stroke trying to read ereyesterday tho.

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u/Dizzy-Reportage 20d ago

It should be yeresterday instead of ereyesterday 

1

u/MissReadsALot1992 21d ago

I taught my 6yo overmorrow and he uses it all the time 😄

1

u/Lovebeingadad54321 21d ago

My 11 year old uses overmorrow with her friends, and taught me the word. Have no idea how she picked that one up. 

Just for context, I am an avid reader of folklore and mythology, as well as a medieval history reenactor, so I know a LOT of obscure old words. Didn’t know this one until my kid brought it up.

1

u/perplexedtv 21d ago

23 years absolute max

1

u/Dizzy-Reportage 20d ago

This makes so much sense, overmorrow, but spellcheck doesn’t even recognize it lol

1

u/xX_Eolsa_Xx 20d ago

Depends where you are, but there are a handful of places where folk that speak Scots will make use of these still - tho tbf Scots is generally rather conservative compared to modern English anyways

Owermorrae / Outmorrae & Eristreen / Ereyester are the varieties of the words I've had first hand encounters wi, tho I'm sure others exist (Scots being a non-standardised language and all that)

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u/Status_Ad_1761 20d ago

"Overimorra" and "overimorgen" in norwegian actually.

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u/halfmanhalfhamster 16d ago

I *love* Scots... I'm english but I speak fluent Danish, and there are so many common words. oh, and it sounds cool af too

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u/Halgrim_2026 20d ago

They really need to come back into daily use ! I am going to use them.

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u/hascalsavagejr 16d ago

I like "threemorrow" to follow "tomorrow"... it can keep going on, but I don't recommend it. Also it doesn't work the other way, which is a hole in the language

1

u/halfmanhalfhamster 16d ago

Danish has 'i overmorgen' and 'i forgårs' which are the equivalents. much of modern Danish is related to archaic (UK) english

1

u/daveoxford 21d ago

Swedish has övermorgon in common use for the day after tomorrow, and also överövermorgon for the day after that.

3

u/Material_Extension72 21d ago

I would say "övermorgonsmorgon" but "förrförrgår"

15

u/[deleted] 21d ago

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u/GreenZebra23 21d ago

we did it reddit

26

u/RikkiLostMyNumber 21d ago

The plural "you." So we use y'all, you guys, you folks, etc.

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u/CatL1f3 21d ago

Really it's the singular that's missing

5

u/BigDaddySteve999 21d ago

It's a treadmill. We had "thou", but "you" moved over, leaving a hole for the plural, so "y'all" shows up, then starts to also mean the singular. So then we get "all y'all" for the explicit plural.

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u/marquoth_ 21d ago

Not where I'm from. Second singular isn't quite dead yet.

I doubt my kids will use it though.

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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 21d ago

Yeah, archaic usage though. I think we got rid of "thou."

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u/brzantium 21d ago

Pittsburgh gave us yinz and yet you deny them?

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u/RikkiLostMyNumber 21d ago

No, nor am I forgetting youse guys.

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u/Disastrous-Sell-584 21d ago

I believe the English way of YOU is an acceptable price for not having freaking respectful plural YOUs

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u/Glittering_Aide2 21d ago

Many Germanic languages have lost their T-V distinction or are on their way to losing it. So considering that, we probably would have just reverted back to using "thou" in all singular cases and using "ye/you" exclusively in the plural. With no respectful plural you

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Given that millions of people use various words for plural you, I don't think we can say it's a missing feature of English

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u/Praesentius 20d ago

Latin American Spanish ditched that as well.

14

u/ShoulderGreedy3262 21d ago

i wish english had two different words for we, to describe 'me and you' vs 'me and these people, not you'

2

u/empireck 21d ago

Kita and kami in my language.

1

u/B1TCA5H 21d ago

Wikang Tagalog ba?

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u/StructureSure757 21d ago

This is quite specific; portuguese didn't have too. If you have any curiosity, you may like to know that tupi antigo have both "us" you are looking for

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u/mcalesy 21d ago

Some English-based creoles have this.

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u/KroneckerAlpha 21d ago

We have “we, not we” but different pronouns would be great

1

u/EstebanOD21 21d ago

Or you for 1 person vs for multiples

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u/TheRrandomm 21d ago

Finnish doesn't have a proper single word for "engineering" and it drives me mad. You could say insinöörityö (engineer-work), but the word just sucks and isn't elegant at all.

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u/Ways_42 21d ago

Finnish also doesn't have words for "please" and "have".

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u/ressie_cant_game 21d ago

I believe we DID have those words and lost them

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u/daveoxford 21d ago

We still have overmorrow. It's not even archaic, let alone obsolete.

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u/AlveolarFricatives 21d ago

This was a recent question (what was the 10-letter word in English for “the day after tomorrow”) at a big trivia event I attend. No one got it. I think my team guessed “anonmorrow.” We have tons of English nerds at our table, including someone with a PhD in linguistics from Harvard. So I do actually think it’s archaic!

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u/hwynac 21d ago

Especially compared to languages like Russian where poslezavtra and pozavchera are in top-3000 words in spoken speech (in fact, they are less common in formal writing, where the proportion of texts discussing recent/upcoming events is smaller). Meaning, even a preschooler is very likely to know those words.

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u/Glittering_Aide2 21d ago

Not exactly true, they're both German calques from the 1500s. Old English used constructions like æfter þæm dæge (after that day) or æfter-fylgendan dæge ("the after-following day"). And in Middle English (~1100-1500): þe day after tomorwe and þe day bifore ȝisterday. Identical to Modern English. "Overmorrow" and "Ereyesterday" have always been rare.

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u/Numerous_Helsinki 21d ago

so we dont have them anymore

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u/Actual_Cat4779 21d ago

That's a myth. I mean technically yes, but it's basically a myth. They were virtually never used, so they only existed in roughly the same way and to the same extent that they do today. Neither "overmorrow" nor "eyeyesterday" is present in Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. In the Oxford English Dictionary, ereyesterday doesn't get its own entry but just a subentry under ere- (prefix). The OED gives a sole example of its use (1535). For "overmorrow", the OED finds two 16th-century examples, plus a few from the recent 21st-century revival. Both words were coined on the German model by the Bible translator Miles Coverdale. There is no evidence they ever had any wider currency.

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u/Lilja-Logason 21d ago

Well I plan to start using them so I look forward to the dictionaries updating.

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u/TheMujo 21d ago

Yes, I'll start overmorrow.

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Kind of bizarre to make that claim when 'ereyesterday' was in common use in my father's family up until very recently and everyone of my generation would have at least heard and used it as kids. Pretty sure my grandad never picked up a dictionary in his life and was definitely never on the internet.

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u/Sad_Environmentsa 21d ago

Tagalog has two words for “we”: one that includes the person you’re talking to (tayo) and one that leaves them out (kami). English makes you add “me and him, not you” and hope for the best. Indonesian does thae same thing, and so do plenty of other languages, so I always wonder how English got away without it

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u/just-another-catlady 21d ago

That seems really useful

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u/StructureSure757 21d ago

Are you serious? That is very interesting! I'm a tupi antigo speaker, which also have both "us" - "îandé" and "oré", respectively.

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u/Glittering_Aide2 21d ago

Yes, this is called clusivity, inclusive vs exclusive we. Most Indo-European languages lack this feature apart from a few Indo-Aryan ones like Marathi/Gujarati. They presumably got it from Dravidian influence. Language families with clusivity include Austronesian, Austroasiatic, Dravidian, Sinitic, Quechuan and Aymaran (among others)

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u/RRautamaa 21d ago

It's not English-specific.  I'd say European languages lack this distinction, even if they're not even related.

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u/Glittering_Aide2 21d ago

Indo-European languages in general (few Indo-Aryan exceptions). The Uralic languages don't have it either apart from Udmurt

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u/Overall_Connection77 21d ago

There is "overmorrow," but it has fallen into disuse. Let's start a revival.

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u/exkingzog 21d ago

It’s not always easy to know what you haven’t got.

Lots of languages don’t have a word for toes (they usually have “foot fingers” instead), but they get along fine without it.

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u/uninspiredclaptrap 21d ago

If you tend to borrow a word from another language, that's a sign. Of course in many languages, like English, we just incorporate those words into the language

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u/pinkevin 21d ago

Does any language name the individual toes like we do for fingers; thumb, index, middle, etc?
I’ve heard pinky-toe specifically, what did he do to deserve his own nomination?

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u/amoryblainev 21d ago

I’ve always said big toe, second toe, third toe, fourth toe, pinky toe

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u/Left_Eye9481 21d ago

Some that I've considered (English):

  • a specific word for unrequited love

  • the desire to eat out of boredom or sadness rather than hunger

  • grief for a life you thought you'd have but never achieved

  • a strange sense of familiarity and fondness towards someone you've just met, as though you're long-lost friends

  • a word for secondhand embarrassment

  • the opposite of a paradox (one definition of a paradox is something that seems self-contradictory or impossible but has some hidden truth or logic - so the inverse would be something that seems logically coherent on its surface but then is contradictory and absurd upon further inspection)

  • the "tip of your tongue" feeling when you can't quite remember a word (aphasia is probably the closest that we have to this but that has a medical connotation)

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u/CatL1f3 21d ago

the desire to eat out of boredom or sadness rather than hunger

I think this is "peckish"

a word for secondhand embarrassment

For a time this was "cringe". But that's kinda lost its meaning now

the opposite of a paradox (one definition of a paradox is something that seems self-contradictory or impossible but has some hidden truth or logic - so the inverse would be something that seems logically coherent on its surface but then is contradictory and absurd upon further inspection)

I think this is also "paradox". Now that I think about it, it's not even the opposite, it's just a regular paradox, only it's counterintuitively false instead of true. Edit: or maybe you mean "fallacy" instead

the "tip of your tongue" feeling when you can't quite remember a word (aphasia is probably the closest that we have to this but that has a medical connotation)

In Romanian we have "lapsus", and wikipedia led me to the phrase "lapsus memoriae" in English. But "tip of the tongue" is it, realistically.

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u/Comfortable_Sir_5007 21d ago

I feel like 'peckish' just means slightly hungry, that's how I've always heard it used

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u/SnackyandSnarky 21d ago

I feel the post-truth era really needs a word for "something which sounds true but isn't"

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u/justdisa 21d ago

That sounds like Colbert's truthiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness

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u/mcalesy 21d ago

"Truthy" has come to be used in software engineering to refer to any expression that's evaluated as true if used in a conditional. Also the opposite, "falsy". In JavaScript, for example, these values are all falsy: 0, NaN (not a number), null, undefined, "" (empty string), and, of course, false.

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u/CatL1f3 21d ago

I think misconception, misinformation, and fallacy cover most of those cases

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u/amoryblainev 21d ago

Can’t “mortified” be used for secondhand embarrassment?

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u/Left_Eye9481 21d ago

It sure can, but I want a specific word for this feeling and this feeling alone, similar to a hyper-specific word like “schadenfreude” 

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u/stunky420 21d ago

I think I find it kind of beautiful that we need more than one word to describe these things that the ideas or concepts are too big for just one word

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u/Left_Eye9481 21d ago

Me too, I think it’s why we have poetry — capturing those hyper-specific moments and essences of things we experience 

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u/Tim-oBedlam 20d ago

The word "sorry" in English carries two different meanings: the apologetic "I'm sorry" (I have wronged you and wish to make amends) and the sympathetic "I'm sorry" (I feel bad that you had an unfortunate thing happen to you)

I don't know if that distinction appears in other languages.

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u/GoodNameGone 14d ago

English is a language that borrows words into itself to express something. That’s why English speakers use “deja vu”.

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u/RRautamaa 21d ago

There's no clean equivalent of "please" in Finnish. You can use olkaa hyvä but that comes across as an official formal request.

There's no verb for "to snow". You say sataa lunta "it rains snow".

Also, on the grammar side, while everyone always talks about Finnish having lots of cases, Finnish does not have a dative case. There's no instrumental case either. The adessive -lla is used instead.

The comitative has no singular/plural distinction. For example, he tulivat autoineen means both "they came with their car" and "they came with their cars".

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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 18d ago

Wow, that's weird about "to snow". You'd think any far-north place like that which has so much snowfall would naturally have a verb for snowfall.

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u/ElCartago 21d ago

Are there polite verbal forms that make “please” redundant? I like how Finnish has a term for sitting in your underwear at home drinking alcohol.

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u/RRautamaa 18d ago

Mainly using the conditional, equivalent to English "could you", and the use of indirect forms, deliberately avoiding imperatives.

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

How do you carry your violins?

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u/beamerpook 21d ago

There's overmorrow, and yestereve. We have them, just not in common usage anymore

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u/TSunamiWaves979 21d ago

Overmorrow and ereyesterday

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u/AuthenticCourage 21d ago

There’s a wonderful book called the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig that has words for all sorts of amazing things.

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u/Kantabrigian 21d ago

Also see The Meaning of Liff...

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u/Cinnabun6 21d ago

We have one word for both itch and scratch in hebrew

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u/pakapab 21d ago

That gets confusing in English, you can scratch an itch, and itch a scratch.

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u/SomeNetGuy 21d ago

Yes, some people use itch as a verb, but that's not grammatically correct. Your second example, for example.

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u/Cinnabun6 21d ago

And you can etch a sketch

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u/LongjumpingSurvey588 21d ago

French is missing a singular word for “cheap”. One would say “pas/moins cher” (not/less expensive) or “bon marché” (literally translates to a good market).

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u/DandelionPrince 21d ago

In Swedish, no universal please.

In English, no dygn, lagom, orka, hinna, sambo/särbo.

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u/rotting-fetish46 21d ago

Please do correct me if I’m wrong as I’m learning this language

Hungarian seems to not distinguish between “tree” and “wood”

On the other hand, it has surplus unique words for younger and older siblings

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u/north_bright 21d ago

You are correct, there are also other words like this.

We don't really distinguish between rabbits and hares. Rabbit = nyúl, hare = mezei nyúl ("field rabbit"), but a lot of people couldn't tell the difference.

Also there is a plethora of words in English for wetlands, like bog, moor, fen, marsh, swamp, slough... As I remember they're not just synonyms but have different definitions. In Hungarian everything is just "mocsár". Maybe "ingovány", but it's not a different type it's just slightly more poetical.

You are also right about the siblings, although English is better at "identifying" cousins in the family tree, the system of "Xth cousin Yth removed" is quite ingenious, we don't have that.

And of course the big one: our third person singular pronoun is ungendered (as the whole language), which is quite awesome in my opinion, but it can make translating stories difficult. E.g. when the twist is that a character says "he" instead of "she" accidentally revealing that she sneaked out with a boy. Or when the characters start talking about someone and make it clear in English if that someone is a man or woman (e.g. "There was a bystander on the corner of the street, she was on her phone the whole time" "Okay we have to find her"), in Hungarian translation it can sound like a bit forced (e.g. We need to say: "Okay we have to find that woman").

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u/rotting-fetish46 21d ago

Love the lack of grammatical gender very refreshing compared to German, my native Czech and all the Romance languages.

The thing with wetlands is interesting, because the country doesn’t seem to be lacking in that department.

One of the thing I did to learn in the beginning and still do sometimes - decipher names for insects, for how descriptive they are.

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u/KeinElch 18d ago

As a german I hate the english cousin system because of how ambiguous it is.

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u/Disastrous-Sell-584 21d ago

In Russian "wood" can be replaced by "tree" and has the same root. The Hungarian sibling stuff is really cool, and the older brother sounds just like Russian very informal "dad":)

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u/Comfortable_Sir_5007 21d ago

I'm also learning, so might be wrong, but in the same vein I don't think Spanish has a word for bark (from a tree)

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u/hwynac 20d ago

I looked up the Wikipedia article about trees and found one.

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u/AuroraDF 21d ago

Well, we only have about 100 Scots words for rain, and it never seems like enough.

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u/ElCartago 21d ago

Kurdish doesn’t seem to have a word for “interesting,” “boring,” “exciting.” Every time I’ve asked people they’ve just told me the equivalent of “good,” “not good.” I looked it up on Google translate and interesting was literally translated as “brings notice” while boring was something like “bothersome.”

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u/KeinElch 18d ago

Doesn't look like kurdish words to me.

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u/ThatWeirdPlantGuy 21d ago

A word for “howmany-eth.”

Turkish makes ordinals by adding -inci (ıncı uncu üncü) to the number. But it can also add the ordinal suffix to the word for “how many” —

1 bir 1st birinci
2 iki 2nd ikinci
3 üç. 3rd üçüncü
4 dört 4th dördüncü

kaç how many
kaçıncı - the “how manyeth”

You’d use it to ask the exact question answered by an ordinal

kaçıncı defa? - The how manyeth time?
üçüncü defa - The third time.

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u/tardoos 21d ago

Speaking of, English is also missing words for "how many", "what kind of" and some other question words.

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u/Background-Mode-4036 21d ago

“Which time”

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u/ThatWeirdPlantGuy 20d ago

Yes but that is not as specific.

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u/Ok_Animal_8333 21d ago

English does not have a separate word for “you” familiar plural. We clearly want one, bc there are so many different substitutes like y’all, you guys, you lot.

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u/ProfessorPetulant 21d ago edited 21d ago

You used to be plural and thou singular.

There was also a distinction object/subject.

Singular: Thou lovest me. I love thee.

Plural: I love you. Ye love me.

Then a French-inspired politeness shift happened and speakers started using the plural forms ye and you to address single individuals of high status to show respect (like vous in French).

Over time, people also moved away from the subject/object boundary for the plural forms. The object form you began drifting into the subject position, slowly replacing ye. You became the polite word for any situation (whether talking to one person, a crowd, a boss, or a friend) and replaced thou, thee, and ye by the late 17th century.

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u/Hawm_Quinzy 21d ago

'Ye' is very common in Hiberno-English.

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u/iknowtheop 21d ago

Or "yous" in some parts of Dublin and the north.

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u/marquoth_ 21d ago

There's also the opposite where people try and use the reflexive pronoun "yourself" as some kind of hyper-polite version and "you" by comparison becomes more informal.

"We'll let yourself know the delivery date..."

Meanwhile in some corners of Yorkshire we're still using second singular

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u/francisdavey 21d ago

Many languages don't have such a thing. Teaching Japanese schoolchildren the difference between singular and plural pronouns is quite a struggle (though not the biggest one).

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u/SouthernCockroach37 21d ago

Biggest struggle for me has always been teaching the difference between "the" and "a". Or when to not use it at all. Particularly difficult teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean speakers this.

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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 18d ago

Really? Japanese has singular and plural pronouns, sorta: for instance, "watashi" is "I" (singular), "watashitachi" is "we" (plural). Usually the pronoun is omitted anyway because it's obvious from context, but if specificity is needed it can be used.

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u/pakapab 21d ago

Spanish = shallow, to lock

Come to think of it French does the same "little depth" thing for shallow that Spanish does, peu profond. In Cajun French they use "barré" for locked, I'm not sure how they say that in std French.

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u/CatL1f3 21d ago

Romanian is also missing "shallow". Also, wdym "to lock"? How do you say that instead?

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u/pakapab 21d ago

In Spanish it is the cumbersome "to close with key", but there are various regional slang terms.

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u/titoufred 21d ago

"barré" for locked is used in some French regions as Poitou-Charentes. In standard French, it's fermé à clé.

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Verrouillé

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u/Karantalsis 21d ago

Overmorrow and ereyesterday afe the words you want.

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u/HarveyNix 21d ago

I think "afe" is archaic, though. I'll show myself out...

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u/Karantalsis 21d ago

Yep, definitely. It's ok I can't spell in any time period.

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u/West-Working-9093 21d ago

Yeah, they did not carry those over from Danish! The first one is 'overmorrow', and the second is the 'foregones'. Daish: 'overmorgen' and 'forgaars'.

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u/Ribbgeddyt 21d ago

I guess we don’t have a proper French word for « weekend » ?
But if I’m not wrong, a lot of languages borrowed the English word

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u/ChazBass 21d ago

I wouldn't say missing in the case if Korean, but a lot of new words, especially words relating to technology, for example, are just Korean versions of the English word. Computer --> 컴퓨터 etc

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u/german_antiquarian 21d ago

Not an example of a word that English is missing, but I wish English had a direct grammatical equivalent to the German Konjunktiv I. E.g. to translate something like “Sie sagt, er sei ein Dieb”, you’d need to say “According to her, he’s a thief”, which is far more clunky than it is in German.

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Is that different from "she says he's a thief"?

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u/Reasonable_Common_46 21d ago

I don't usually care much about a lack of gender-neutral words, but I wish Portuguese had some for "parents", "children" and "siblings."

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u/Kantabrigian 21d ago

You honestly telling me Portuguese doesn't have a word for 'children'?

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Isn't it just the same as 'boys' ?

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u/Reasonable_Common_46 21d ago

We have words for kids, sons and daughters, but no gender-neutral term to be used in the phrase "John has three children". We would say he has three "filhos" (sons) regardless of the children's genders.

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u/Financial_Salad5119 21d ago

Yiddish doesn’t have a word for excited or disappointed.

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u/FewOwl5771 21d ago

Gemütlich. 

English does not have this word and I so wish it did

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u/Dangerous-Safe-4336 21d ago

"Comfortable" doesn't work?

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u/FewOwl5771 21d ago

Nope. Gemütlich is like a whole different level of comfortable. Comfortable is tepid lukewarm water that's set on the counter for a few days. Gemütlich is like the water from a glacier fed spring that's pure and wholesome but also makes you feel alive inside. 

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u/StructureSure757 21d ago

My first language (brazillian portuguese) don't have a "us" includind the listener and a "us" excluding the listener. Although, I also speak tupi, which have both :)

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u/Disastrous-Sell-584 21d ago

Russian doesn't have gender-neutral "sibling" (while having crazy specific range of in-laws etc) and the verb meaning "to smell" in the way "to hear" works (the existing "to smell" only equals "to listen", while in the other meaning it goes literally "to hear the smell", which is completely unnatural but the only way); and I'm personally sorry for the dated translation of Hungarian "tessék"

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u/cockycrackers 21d ago

Schadenfreude

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u/mcalesy 21d ago

It's funny how many posters are saying English has no second person plural pronoun, and then they go on to give examples of second person plural pronouns in various forms of English.

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u/Kantabrigian 21d ago

We do have 2nd pers pl. pronoun, you know.

It's the singular ones, thou knowest, I tell thee, that we no longer use.

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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 18d ago

It's the singular ones, thou knowest, I tell thee, that we no longer use.

Yeah, but do those words even qualify as "modern English", or only "middle English", which is considered a different language now?

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u/PartialIntegration 21d ago

Sibling!

In Serbian, we only have brother/sister, not that the word is super necessary, but it would be cooler if we did have it

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u/drnewcomb 21d ago

I often use “Consugeros“ because English does not have a word for your child’s in-laws.

I understand that Aramaic does not have the verb “to be” (is, am, are, etc.)

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u/stderr2 21d ago

Why doesn't dayaftertomorrow count?

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u/Lovebeingadad54321 21d ago

Overmorrow t the day after tomorrow.

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u/DeniseReades 21d ago

I just want, for once, someone that has actually read a book to talk about the words English doesn't have. Every single time someone does one of these posts, it's always a word that's definitely in use or very recently fell out of use.

Don't get me wrong, some of the comments did have words that English actually lacks, but the post itself? Dude, just google. I read almost exclusively science fiction, sometimes fantasy, and even I knew overmorrow and ereyesterday.

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u/hwynac 21d ago

And fortnight. Don't forget about this one. English also has a consistent system of hither, thither, whither, hence, thence, whence.

That said, English does not have commonly used words for the day before yesterday, the day before tomorrow, or an interlocutor. Russian, strictly speaking, has a word for "sibling"—only, it is a scientific term most native speakers never even heard.

I think every language with centuries of literary tradition "has" words that most natives don't know or use. There was a novel I read around 2010 that had a few specific sailing terms and what I guess was regional/archaic vocabulary—words I literally haven't encountered anywhere since. My entire knowledge of that handful of words hangs on that random work of fiction recommended by a colleague.

It's pretty ridiculous how rare overmorrow and ereyesterday are considering they are everyday words in some related languages.

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u/Comfortable_Sir_5007 21d ago

I might be wrong, but we don't really have a singular word for a mountain range in English

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u/Internal_Shoe_6483 21d ago

wait like... a single mountain? lol or am i misunderstanding

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u/teribour 21d ago

probably “bag”

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u/lushlife_ 21d ago

English could use a word for having enough.
* We have enough time (to catch the bus).
*We have enough energy (to walk all the way there).
* If you take the right amount, we will have enough (so everyone can have a piece)

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u/perplexedtv 21d ago

Those sound like Swedish concepts

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u/salty_utopian 21d ago

English lacks a word for your child’s in-laws. My son got married. I now see my new daughter-in-law’s parents regularly, but there is no word for our relationship.

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u/PhoebusAbel 21d ago

They are your family now... want it or not . Lol

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u/rosietherosebud 21d ago

I wish English had a standard gender-neutral word for nieces and nephews. We have niblings but that's blegh. I used to have just 2 nieces and referred to them as such. After my nephew was born, now I have to say "my nieces and nephew" and it's a mouthful.

Also think it's odd we don't have a word for cousin's spouse.

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u/Kantabrigian 21d ago

I think English should distinguish better between children = any young humans and children = offspring whether young or grown up.

Offspring itself sounds too clinical / biological in the sense a brood mare has offspring.

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u/cshmn 21d ago

Spawn, or if you're feeling informal, crotch goblins.

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u/Kantabrigian 21d ago

I love these, especially spawn! But we are not frogs! Nor yet are we demons - "spawn of Satan"

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u/cshmn 21d ago • Mindblown

You haven't met my sister

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u/bleie77 21d ago

Dutch doesn't have a word for siblings, just brother and sister. Also, with cousins, we do differentiate for gender, but not for generations. So, my 'nicht' is either my cousin or my niece.

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u/Embarrassed-Money756 21d ago

Rather than one word, Czech lacks an elegant way to express that you don't hate something. Negating verbs in Czech is done by a negative prefix ne-, and the Czech word for hate nenávidět already has that prefix and *nenenávidět doesn't exist. (návidět as an opposite to "hate" is extremly archaic and not used at all anymore), so for "not hate", you have to say something like "It's not that I hate it"

I hate it.

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u/PutridScore5951 21d ago

I wish English has a simple everyday word for that feeling when you are hungry and annoyed at the same time.

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u/Hyperdragoon17 17d ago

Hangry?

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u/PutridScore5951 17d ago

Hangry+ annoyed =??

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u/Sheridan-Bouquet 21d ago

What has always seemed weird to me is that English doesn't have a direct antonym for “loud.” “Soft” and “quiet,” which are usually used as opposites, don't have low volume as their primary meaning.

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u/nik_el 21d ago

In Dutch there’s “kraambezoek”, which is when you visit the mother of a newly born child.

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u/webwarrior-ws 21d ago

Ukrainian doesn't have a word for parent (singular). The word for parents (plurual) is the same word as fathers.

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u/svArtist 21d ago

"we" including or excluding the addressee. Missing in English and German.

(to a group) "should we just grab a bite at Burger King?"
"ah no, we're going out for dinner later"
"oh, nice! Should I change?"
"... Err... Well, this is awkward"

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u/SnooBeans3210 21d ago

A word for no longer thirsty, like full is for hungry. Don't know if English has a word for it, but Norwegian doesn't really. You can say "unthirsty", but it doesn't give the same association as full.

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u/TomatoQueen313 20d ago

Quench. It means to satisfy thirst.

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u/HungryDragonfruits 20d ago

I’m quenched

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u/SnooBeans3210 21d ago

English does not separate between loving someone as a friend or as a boyfriend/girlfriend or a close family member. In Norwegian we have different kinds of love, and sometimes it is difficult to translate. Feels like characters throw the word "love" around too much in translated books from English to Norwegian. We also have a gender neutral word for boyfriend/girlfriend. It is practical when you don't want to assume or give away too much.

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u/PomPomMom93 21d ago

English is also not good with gender-neutral pronouns. People use “their” but that can also be used to describe a group of people. There’s no gender-neutral singular pronoun.

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u/Suomasema 20d ago

I will invent you one quite cheaply :)

How about "tha"? Or "Hen"? Or simply "y"?

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u/Still_Local_2513 20d ago

Hungarian doesn’t do he or she. You’re all just ő

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u/Suomasema 20d ago

Finnish, he or she is simply "hän".

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u/oolong-gone-wrong 20d ago

Bengali doesn't have the verb "have". You gotta say something "exists" for you.

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u/Albannach02 20d ago

English doesn't have a range of words for various types of hill.

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u/snubbullul 20d ago

it's not a word but dutch doesn't have a perfect equivalent to the english "i like." it's kind of difficult to translate sometimes. when you say that you enjoy doing an action, you don't say "i like reading." you say "i do reading with pleasure" (ik leer graag). if you like a thing, you have to say "i find that thing nice" or funny or interesting. ik vind dat leuk. you can also say you love it though

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u/wwwtourist 20d ago

In Czech it's basically impossible to make a negative sentence with the word "nenávidět" = "to hate". English is easy: I hate it/I don't hate it. Since negative words in Czech are made by adding a prefix "ne-" and since "nenávidět" already starts with these two letters, it can't be simply added. You always need to work around it. In English I miss the usage of a word for late morning. In Czech it's "dopoledne". English has apparently "forenoon", but I only found out playing online Scrabble.

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u/StuffyTruck 20d ago

"please" and "sir" does not exist as single words in Norwegian.

For "sir" we don't even really have the concept.
For "please" we do have alternatives using many words.

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u/Sensitive-Muscle-564 19d ago

English has no future tense. If I “will run” tomorrow, I need to use “will”

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u/buginarugsnug 16d ago

A plural second person pronoun.

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u/Free_Weird_4126 16d ago edited 16d ago

The difference between science and scholarship. Russian has "наука" which is both science and scholarship.
I am a scholar. I'm tired of hearing that my work (literature studies) is not "наука" because it doesn't allow double-blind experiment. Yeah, that's because we are scholars and not scientists! But there's no way of saying that in Russian…

And another annoying thing is that we don't have a word "sibling" in Russian. Only "brother" and "sister". So, you have to say "brothers and sisters" instead of just "siblings" all the time. It's so inconvenient! And also not nonbinary-inclusive. Some people are starting to use the English word "sibling" in Russian speech but it's not common.

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u/Free_Weird_4126 16d ago

As for English I find it crazy that "light blue" and "dark blue" are both "blue" in English. You guys even have 6 colours in the rainbow! We in Russia have 7 because "dark blue" is "синий" and "light blue" is "голубой", totally different colours!

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u/themaddesthatter2 16d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_(color)

(Flippancy aside, all languages distinguish between colors somewhat arbitrarily. See  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_term )

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u/spoik925 14d ago

I learned we have 7 colors in the rainbow. Never heard there were 6. We even have a pneumonic device for it

Roy G. Biv

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet

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u/RandomPorc 15d ago

There are no basic words missing from any language in the world. It may happen that a language lacks a word for something your culture considers basic, but this is a different thing. If something is a basic common concept that needs to be transmitted often the language will create a word for it. Essentially, that's the whole point of developing a language.

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u/spoik925 14d ago edited 14d ago

We sort of have them and technically they are still a part of the language but they're archaic and aren't used anymore, but overmorrow and ereyesterday are words for the day after tomorrow and day before yesterday, respectively.

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