words, words, words

I have spent some time over the past few days thinking about words. Don’t the experts say that words illustrate what a society values, like the Eskimos who have dozens of words for snow. Since we think in words, what does it mean that words exist in some languages, but not in others?

Serbian has a word for ‘a person who rides a bus without a ticket.’ Someone asked me the English equivalent & I told her that there isn’t one. She told me that that must mean that people who speak English are more honest than Serbians.

The Hungarian language differentiates between slippers that just cover ones toes and the kind that cover the entire foot, like regular shoes. Serbian and English do not have such nuances in slipper vocabulary. Why does Hungarian differentiate? Can slipper style really be that important?

This lack of equivalent words also has political ramifications. In English the adjective ‘Serb’ is generally used to refer to someone or something of Serb ethnicity while ‘Serbian’ describes someone or something having to do with the territory of Serbia. I just learned that there is no equivalent nuance in Serbian. This means that ethnic Serbs who live in Bosnia call themselves ‘Serbs’ while ethnic minorities in Serbia don’t have an easy way to say ‘I am a citizen of Serbia’ without making it seem like they are denying their ethnic heritage. On of the speakers at the conference last weekend spoke of this. Maybe the awkward hypenation that is so common in America can catch on here. ‘I am a Hungarian-Serb’ doesn’t have the best ring to it, but it might be better than the alternatives.