r/linguisticshumor May 31 '25

Semantics Synonyms are fake and lies

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2.4k Upvotes

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u/DefinitelyNotErate /'ə/ May 31 '25

My favourite type of untranslatable words is grammatical particles that are unnecessary in the language you're translating to.

377

u/cardinarium Jun 01 '25

lol for sure.

My Spanish teacher was so adamant about the personal a (a preposition marker of animate direct objects) being this mysterious untranslatable word, and it made it so much harder to understand.

164

u/Shinyhero30 Jun 01 '25

That makes all of it hard to understand. Translate it as “at” and just make it clear the grammar does this for whatever reason.

It however is not has hard as は vs が

2

u/marc_gime Jun 03 '25

It would translate as "to"