Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen

In typical British fashion I’m going to start this blog by referencing the weather. When I woke up this morning (one hour earlier than normal as the clocks had gone back), the skies were blue and clear. Having been warned that ‘stormageddon’ is due to make landfall tonight, we decided to make the most of the sunshine and take a walk in Greenwich Park. As we were walking, I felt a sudden burst of what can only be described as Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen – a joy of kicking through piles of leaves.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a real word. It’s something that Ben Schott made up in his new book ‘Schottenfreude: German Words for the Human Condition’ – you can read (and listen to) excerpts from the book here. For a language geek like me, this book is a dream. One of my favourite things about German is the way you can just tack words together to create whole new words. The 63-letter long Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz is a prime (pardon the pun) example of this, though unfortunately it ceased to exist earlier this year.

Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen prompted me to do a bit more research on ‘untranslatable’ words (and by that I mean words that don't have a one-to-one match – all words can be translated, of course). Two of my favourites on this list are the Inuit word iktsuarpok, which is the sense of anticipation that makes you go outside and check to see if anyone is coming, and the Spanish term sobremesa, which means to hang around after a meal and chat to the people you ate with.

I think it’s interesting that these cultures felt the need to create these words in the first place. The Inuit people live in very remote areas, and probably don’t get that many visitors – so I imagine the sense of anticipation they feel when they think someone’s coming to visit is indeed great. And we all know the Spanish are a very sociable lot who love their food. So sobremesa (literally ‘about the table’) is probably a national pastime.

It’s a bit like phubbing I suppose – words only ever come into existence if there’s a need for them. So next time you’re left wondering why there isn’t a word for something you’re trying to say, why not just make it up instead?