2008-04-01

Indonesian words you can't translate to english

let's list some Indonesian words which do not have any equivalent in english due to their cultural context, complex meanings or any other reasons

correct me if you do find a direct translation

'norak' is one of them
you can say 'tacky' for most situations but I think 'norak' has more dimensions to that... when it applies to appearance, like someone's got a really poor taste in clothes, you can say that's tacky... but norak can also apply to personality and that's just a little hard to describe

another one is 'segan'
a close substitute is 'hesitant', but that's more like 'ragu2' and we know that 'ragu2' and 'segan' are quite different.. segan is more like, you get invited and offered a cake, you dont want to trouble the person, but you do want the cake, but it doesnt look nice to appear too eager... ahhhh

and then we have 'memarahi'
it's like a combination of lecturing and yelling and scolding and giving you the look .... I think this one is cultural... in English, they view anger as an emotion (angry) while Indonesians view it as both emotion (marah) and action (memarahi)

got any more?

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