Learning another language opens doors. One of which is my fascination with words that I didn’t grow up with. Being bi-lingual, sometimes when talking in one language, to complete my thought—exactly how I thought it—is impossible without switching into another language.
Every language has a personality; like people. Language is fluid, being changed and molded by the culture around it: it is not stagnant. You can put the words in a book and call it a dictionary, but you will constantly be writing new editions, and they won’t keep up with the word on the street.
In Portuguese, the main word that continually comes up in my vocabulary that doesn’t work in English is Saudades. I normally go into a paragraph-long rant about a “desire, longing, missing, yearning feeling” and by that time, whoever I was talking to is confused enough to miss the point. The point was I was feeling Saudades.
Saudades is a melancholy word that will never be rightly, fully translated into English. That is why I love it even more and claim it for any indescribable emotion pulsing through me. When I feel quiet. When I feel the world swirl around me. When I feel like kissing a stranger on the cheek and then forgetting forever…
An official definition of Saudades is “A Portuguese word that describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return. It’s related to the feelings of longing, yearning…The love that remains after someone is gone, the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. An emptiness, like someone or something should be there in a particular moment is missing. a bittersweet, existential yearning and hopefulness towards something over which one has no control.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade)
“Some specialists say the word may have originated during the Great Portuguese Discoveries, giving meaning to the sadness felt about those who departed on journeys to unknown seas and disappeared in shipwrecks, died in battle, or simply never returned. Those who stayed behind—mostly women and children—suffered deeply in their absence…The state of mind has subsequently become a “Portuguese way of life”: a constant feeling of absence, the sadness of something that’s missing, wishful longing for completeness or wholeness and the yearning for the return of that now gone.”
My fascination with Saudades grew after I read an article about 20 untranslateable words (http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/) and four of them (one listed in the comments)—five if you include Saudades (which made the list) are basically about the same thing, but in different languages:
1. Hiraeth. A Welsh word that “Attempts to translate it is homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. It is a mix of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and the earnest desire for the Wales of the past.”
2. Toska. A Russian word that “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
3. Litost. A Czech word that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.”
4. Depaysement. A French word of “that feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.”
Wikipedia added many more words that relate to Saudades in other languages: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudade )
5. Sevda. A Turkish word that is also translated “black bile.” “In Bosnian language, the term sevdah represents pain and longing for a loved one. Sevdah is also a genre of traditional music originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sevdah songs are very elaborate, emotionally charged and are traditionally sung with passion and fervor.”
6. Extranar. A Spanish word that “one feels a missing part of oneself, which can never be completely filled by the thing you cannot have or get back.”
7. Mall. An Albanian word that “encompasses feelings of passionate longing, sadness, and at the same time an undefined laughter from the same source.”
8. Wehmut. A German word that is “a fuzzy form of nostalgia. Or Weltschmerz, which is the general pain caused by an imperfect state of being or state of the world.”
9. Dor. A Romanian word “for love or “desire” having a derivation in the noun dorinţă and the verb dori, both of them being translated usually by wish and to wish. However, although the word dor has a complex meaning, it still does not encompass the full meaning of saudade. Dor is derived from the Latin dolus (“pain”), the same root as the Portuguese word dor, also meaning pain.”
10. Koprnenje. A Slovenian word that “embraces the fatalistic undertones of saudade.”
11. Kaiho. A Finnish word that “means a state of involuntary solitude in which the subject feels incompleteness and yearns for something unattainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain.”
12. Keurium. A Korean word (그리움), that “reflects a yearning for anything that has left a deep impression in the heart—a memory, a place, a person, etc.”
13. Natsukashii. A Japanese word that “is used to express a longing for the past. It connotes both happiness for the fondness of that memory and goodness of that time, as well as sadness that it is no longer. It can also mean “sentimental,” and is a wistful emotion. The character used to write natsukashii can also be read as futokoro 懐 [ふところ] and means “bosom,” referring to the depth and intensity of this emotion that can even be experienced as a physical feeling or pang in one’s chest—a broken heart, or a heart feeling moved.”
14. Wajd. An Arabic word (وجد) that “means a state of transparent sadness caused by the memory of a loved one who is not near, it’s widely used in ancient Arabic poetry to describe the state of the lover’s heart as he or she remembers the long gone love. It’s a mixed emotion of sadness for the loss, and happiness for having loved that person.”
15. Ergah. A Hebrew word (ערגה) that “means yearning/longing/desire coupled with deep sadness.”
I think I have found the Greek equivilent as well, in 2 Corinthians 5:2 “For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven.” And 2 Corinthians 9:14 “…(People from the other churches) Who long for you because of the exceeding grace of God in you.” This word is Epipotheó, meaning “to yearn affectionately, to long for, strain after, desire greatly. To intensely crave possession (lawfully or wrongfully), and (earnestly) desire (greatly), (greatly) long (after), lust.” (http://concordances.org/greek/1971.htm)
It is nice to know I am not alone in this feeling. My life is in two pieces, where I will always have Saudades for one (Brazil and everyone there, or the USA and everyone there) while I am in the other. It is a wonderful life, with two families, two communities, two sets of problems, two sets of joys and successes. Then there is the place where I am alone in the middle, trying to connect myself or the two or simply the irreconcilable things of this world.
Those times I can’t feel anything. It is all gone. I know what is right, and I know every old decision like the back of my hand. I live off of them until I find myself again. I alternate between thoughts of how can I return and how could I have left. Neither one sticks. They flake off and float down on the floor.
People ask how I fit. Transition. Acclimate. It is easy: one foot and then the other, a plane, a train, and there you are. You arrive, keep your eyes open, give lots of hugs, and listen to stories. You wait for them to ask the questions, and then you answer. Your body does everything automatically. You fall into habit. Into social order. Into the path of least resistance. And it is good. But every once in awhile I peek out of somewhere and wonder where I am, how I got here, and what happens next.
Most of this probably doesn’t even have to do with Brazil/USA/Rachel drama. It is a holy longing. There is a buried me that hasn’t adjusted and probably never will. I was made for heaven, and part of me somewhere still remembers that. But most of the time it stays buried. I have learned to hide it.
“No matter where I wander I’m still haunted by your name
The portrait of your beauty stays the same
Standing by the ocean wondering where you’ve gone
If you’ll return again
Where is the ring I gave to Nancy Spain?”—Barney Rush
Recent Comments