From the Huffington Post: "11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures". Some I hadn't seen before. These always make me think about linguistic relativity. Does the structure of language influence and constrain thought? The words here certainly suggest that culture may have something to do with it. The illustrations that accompany the words are for the most part good, however, the illustration attached to #3 - 'iktsuarpok' from the Inuit - is painfully stereotypic and spoils an otherwise excellent word.
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3/10/2019 05:58:06 pm
There are other local words that do no have a direct English translations. Actually, there are millions of words that couldn't be translated directly, and that is okay! Most of these words are cultured-based, so we need to understand these differences. I hope we all got the message of this post, aren't? Language may be a barrier for some people, but we should never let it be a huge hindrance for us to communicate with other people.
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I am a professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, and director of the Curriculum & Instruction doctoral program. I have served as an associate editor at Child Development, Applied Psycholinguistics, and an editor at Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools. I was a bilingual teacher in Detroit, MI and have worked in district, state, and nonprofit settings. I work with bilingual learners from multilingual homes in K-8 settings, thinking about language use and development, cross-linguistic relations, instructional interventions, and teacher practice. I've published a bunch of articles and book chapters, and have developed language and reading curricula. I always work in close collaboration with teachers to facilitate the translation of research to practice.