Hi! I just finished the 24h challenge, where I made Eunoia.
🌎 I've been nomading around for a few years now and have always found it super interesting to find words that only exist in one particular language. Often I find that word, in some way, represents that culture pretty closely. For example, Ikigai, Kaizen, and Karoshi in Japanese.
👩💻I wanted to create a searchable directory where people could find words that were interesting to them (ex: tags like "personal growth") or search by specific languages to get a better sense of that particular culture.
🙏I stumbled upon the word Eunoia which in Latin means, "well-thinking" or "beautiful mind" which I felt like pretty well represented the uniqueness of these words and cultures.
📹If you'd like to watch how this was created, you can access my stream here. If you enjoy Eunoia, you can vote for it as part of the 24h challenge here.
PS: Fun fact - Eunoia is the shortest word containing all five vowels.
@stephsmith this is such a great idea! I was talking to an Argentinian last week about this exact thing and how useful it would be to be able to look up the meanings! Massive congratulations on building this in 24 hours. You rock!! 🙌🙌
@stephsmith Nice job on not only building but also launching this in 24 hours!
Also, why haven't I ever heard the term "liquor corpse" before?? Haha! Schnapsleiche!
I know where I'll look next time I stumble upon that kind of word. It's actually pretty fun to just browse the list.
Pros:
Original idea! I think it'd be useful for travelers & nomads.
Cons:
None
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Hey Steph - Congrats on this Steph. Very interesting . Any knowledgable insight into why where seems to be so many untranslatable words in both Japanese and German ?
@taxodapp Great question. I've been thinking about this a lot myself. I *think* it's possibly because they have very unique cultures. If you look at the Japanese words specifically, they really embody their culture and I think they naturally need to make up new words to describe things that happen on a daily basis in Japan, that don't happen elsewhere (karoshi is a sad, but good example of this).
Would love to hear your thoughts on this!
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You should consider adding +/- vote buttons, similar to urban dictionary. I found at least 1 word that is translatable. Lovely product, it would be great if it took of and grew!
@lebaux Thank you Pierre! 🙂 Yes, a bunch of the words initially on there were not the best since I had to crowd-source and build in 24h! I've tried to vet and go through the list to improve it, but still definitely not perfect.
I also really like the idea of upvoting/downvoting. I think this will be one of the projects I'll focus on moving forward, so let me know if you have any other suggestions!
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@stephsmith if you make some major updates please let me know :) good luck!
I don't really understand the concept of "words that can't translate". Do you mean they can't be translated by a single word in English? Because I've found many of them that translate in other language than English.
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Funny idea @stephsmith !
You need a Wikipedia-like system for corrections though: I see the Spanish word 'anteayer' that has no translation in English but does have one in Dutch (and probably other languages).
@luca_spanjaard ah that's a good point! I guess there could be a column for languages that it actually can be translated into. 🙂
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As a person appreciating language quirks and interesting concepts, this is a cool project that I've been looking for and will bookmark. I would like to reseearch and send some more Russian words too. And I really hope you will keep this project running even after completing the challenge.
@makcraft Thank you so much! I do plan to keep this running and maybe extend it further. If you have any word suggestions, especially for languages like Russian where I don't have many yet, I would really appreciate it! Feel free to add them in the form directly or send them to me at hello@stephsmith.io
I know where I'll look next time I stumble upon that kind of word. It's actually pretty fun to just browse the list.
Pros:Original idea! I think it'd be useful for travelers & nomads.
Cons:None