1 Age-otori (Japanese): To look worse after a haircut

2 Arigata-meiwaku (Japanese): An act someone does for you that you didn’t want to have them do and tried to avoid having them do, but they went ahead anyway, determined to do you a favor, and then things went wrong and caused you a lot of trouble, yet in the end social conventions required you to express gratitude

3 Backpfeifengesicht (German): A face badly in need of a fist

4 Bakku-shan (Japanese): A beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind

5 Desenrascanco (Portuguese): “to disentangle” yourself out of a bad situation (To MacGyver it)

6 Duende (Spanish): a climactic show of spirit in a performance or work of art, which might be fulfilled in flamenco dancing, or bull-fighting, etc.

7 Forelsket (Norwegian): The euphoria you experience when you are first falling in love

8 Gigil (Filipino): The urge to pinch or squeeze something that is unbearably cute

9 Guanxi (Mandarin): in traditional Chinese society, you would build up good guanxi by giving gifts to people, taking them to dinner, or doing them a favor, but you can also use up your gianxi by asking for a favor to be repaid

10 Ilunga (Tshiluba, Congo): A person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time

11 L’esprit de l’escalier (French): usually translated as “staircase wit,” is the act of thinking of a clever comeback when it is too late to deliver it

12 Litost (Czech): a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery

13 Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan): A look between two people that suggests an unspoken, shared desire

14 Manja (Malay): “to pamper”, it describes gooey, childlike and coquettish behavior by women designed to elicit sympathy or pampering by men. “His girlfriend is a damn manja. Hearing her speak can cause diabetes.”

15 Meraki (Greek): Doing something with soul, creativity, or love. It’s when you put something of yourself into what you’re doing

16 Nunchi (Korean): the subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In Western culture, nunchi could be described as the concept of emotional intelligence. Knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation. A socially clumsy person can be described as ‘nunchi eoptta’, meaning “absent of nunchi”

17 Pena ajena (Mexican Spanish): The embarrassment you feel watching someone else’s humiliation

18 Pochemuchka (Russian): a person who asks a lot of questions

19 Schadenfreude (German): the pleasure derived from someone else’s pain

20 Sgriob (Gaelic): The itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whisky

21 Taarradhin (Arabic): implies a happy solution for everyone, or “I win. You win.” It’s a way of reconciling without anyone losing face. Arabic has no word for “compromise,” in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement

22 Tatemae and Honne (Japanese): What you pretend to believe and what you actually believe, respectively

23 Tingo (Pascuense language of Easter Island): to borrow objects one by one from a neighbor’s house until there is nothing left

24 Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods

25 Yoko meshi (Japanese): literally ‘a meal eaten sideways,’ referring to the peculiar stress induced by speaking a foreign language

Karaoke- Japanese

Karaoke, the beloved/hated entertainment that involves non-professional singers performing without live bands, has a poetic-sounding origin: “empty orchestra.”

It comes from the Japanese kara (“empty”) + ōke, short forōkesutora (“orchestra”).

That same kara also appears in karate: “empty” + te (“hand”).

Karaoke became popular in Japan among businessmen in the late 1970s, and gained widespread popularity in the U.S. in the late 1980s.

Kerfuffle- Scottish Gaelic

Kerfuffle means “disturbance or fuss,” often describing a situation that’s received more attention than it deserves.

“Fuffle” was first used in Scottish English, as early as the 16th century, as a verb meaning “to dishevel.” The addition of the prefix “car-” (possibly derived from a Scottish Gaelic word meaning “wrong” or “awkward”) barely changed the word’s meaning. In the 19th century “carfuffle” became a noun, and in the mid-20th century it was embraced by a broader population of English speakers and standardized to “kerfuffle.”

Chutzpah- Yiddish

Chutzpah comes from the Yiddish khutspe, meaning “impudence.”

In American English, chutzpah describes a particular kind of nerve, or gall. It refers to the supreme self-confidence that allows a person to do or say things that may seem shocking to others.

Kowtow- Chinese

To “kowtow” is to agree too easily or eagerly to do what someone else wants you to do, or to obey someone with power in a way that seems weak.

It comes from the Chinesekòutóu – kòu (“to knock”) plus tóu (“head”) – and originally referred to kneeling and touching one’s head to the ground as a salute or act of worship to a revered authority.

In traditional China, this ritual was performed by commoners making requests to the local magistrate, by the emperor to the shrine of Confucius, or by foreign representatives appearing before the emperor to establish trade relations.

In the late 18th century, some Western nations resisted performing the ritual, which acknowledged the Chinese emperor as the “son of heaven.”

The noun arrived in English in the early 1800s, and within a few decades had taken on the “fawn” or “suck up” verb meaning we use today.

Schadenfreude- German

The German Schaden means “damage”; Freude means “joy”; the English Schadenfreude means “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.”

As the Schadenfreude song from Avenue Q puts it: “And when I see how sad you are / It sort of makes me… / Happy!”

Apparatchik- Russian

Nowadays, apparatchik is generally used as a mild insult for a blindly devoted official, follower, or member of an organization, such as a corporation or political party.

Originally the word referred specifically to a Communist official or agent. It comes from the Russian apparat meaning “party machine” – and for much of the 20th century specifically “the political machine of the Communist party” – + -chik, an agent suffix.

Boondocks- Tagalog

Boondocks (and boonies) both mean “a rural area,” particularly one considered backward, dull, or unsophisticated.

In Tagalog, the language that is the base for Filipino, an official language of the Philippines, bundok means “mountains.” Following the Philippine Revolution of 1898, the occupying American military forces adopted “boondocks” and broadened its meaning to refer to the wild and rural country they found there.

Ketchup- Malay

This all-American condiment started out as a spicy, fermented fish sauce in Malaysia.

That version, known askěchap, made its way first to Europe and then to the New World, where tomatoes eventually became the defining ingredient.

Elsewhere, ketchup retains an earlier identity. Traditional English ketchup, for example, is a pureed seasoning based on mushrooms, unripe walnuts, or oysters.

Juggernaut- Hindi

A juggernaut is something (such as a force, campaign, or movement) that is huge and powerful and can’t be stopped.

The word rolled into English from Hindi with a fairly terrifying image.

It comes from Jagannāth (Hindi for “Lord of the World”), the title of the Hindu god Vishnu. According to some exaggerated but widespread reports dating back to the 14th century, during parades in India, devotees of Vishnu would sacrifice themselves by being crushed beneath the wheels of carriages carrying images of Vishnu.

Hazard- Arabic

Hazard dates to the time of the Crusaders and involves a game of chance.

According to the most likely theory, the original hazard(“al-zahr,” in Arabic) was a die. Players would roll the dice and bet on the outcome.

English got the word from French. In English, hazard eventually came to name any chance, risk, or source of danger.

source: http://www.merriam-webster.com/top-ten-lists/top-10-favorite-words-from-foreign-languages/karaoke.html

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

“A dense language will make use of fewer speech chunks than a sparser language for a given amount of semantic information.”

In other words, your ears aren’t deceiving you: Spaniards really do sprint and Chinese really do stroll, but they will tell you the same story in the same span of time.