A lexical gap (sometimes known as a lacuna, which sounds much more exotic and pretty) is basically a gap in the language; it's when there isn't a word for something. There are examples of these in every language. In Romanian, there is no word for shallow, and so you have to say "not so deep". In Russian, there is no gender-neutral word for sibling; only the words for brother and sister exist.
In English, some lexical gaps include a word for someone who isn't a virgin, a solely plural version of "you" (to avoid confusion), a word for when you need to sneeze, and a word for a parent who has lost a child (we have the words "orphan" and "widow", for similar cases).
Some lexical gaps in English may be accounted for in other languages: a joke so bad that it's funny ("jayus" in Indonesian); pleasure at another's misfortune ("schaudenfraude" in German); being embarrassed on someone else's behalf ("fremdschämen" in German); feeling so angry that you might throw up ("mukamuka" in Japanese); and when a person has things borrowed from them one by one until they have nothing left (the word "tingo" comes from Easter Island).
Several languages – such as Greek and German – have words
for different levels of love. "Agápe" is the Greek word for romantic love, while "eros" is sometimes thought of as sexual love and sometimes as an appreciation of the beauty of a person; "philia" is love for a friend, or platonic love; storge is generally thought of as being familial love, though there are not many records of its usage.
One solution to the problem of lexical gaps is, rather than inventing words that may take years to catch on, borrowing words from other languages -- there are abundant little-used words in foreign languages that are perfect for what we might mean. Words such as this are called loanwords, and the long list of loadwords in common use includes "au pair" (French), "yin yang" (Chinese Mandarin), armada (Spanish), and "carpe diem" (Latin).
What a very interesting article! Interestingly, in Filipino and some other South East asian languages, there is no word for "he" or "she." Pronouns are gender neutral which can cause confusion, and to specify a "he," Filipinos would not use the pronoun at all (which seems to defeat the purpose of having a pronoun). Also in Filipino, there is a word for an older brother "kuya" yet there is no word for a specifically younger brother. There is a word for the youngest in the family - bunso - yet this word applies to the youngest, whether male or female!
ReplyDeleteDespite Filipino's seemingly large lexical gaps it does contain some words for English lexical gaps, like "sumingit" to mean "to push in front of a queue" and "gigil," to mean "when you're so angry that your teeth clatter."
How interesting languages are! Thanks for the article.
That's really interesting! I like "sumingit". :) This makes me wish I was bilingual just so that I could compare two languages more easily.
ReplyDeleteWe also have the issue of there being so many lesser known words so that, even if there IS a word for what we want to say, we might not know it. Language is really much more complex than I could understand without a lifetime of studying it.