In French, there is no difference between "conscience" and "consciousness." In Japanese, there is a word that specifically refers to the splittable wooden chopsticks you get at restaurants. The German word "fremdschämen" encapsulates the feeling you get when you're embarrassed on behalf of someone else. All of these require explanation in order to properly communicate their meaning, and are, to varying degrees, untranslatable. Choose a word, tell us what it means, and then explain why it cannot (or should not) be translated from its original language.
Тоска, pronounced "Toska", is a Russian word that roughly translates to yearning, anguish, melancholy and a longing for something or someone. As said by Vladimir Nabokov, "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom." This word, or rather feeling, is one that I have become very familiar with throughout my life.
My native tongue is Russian, so I learned the word "toska" at a very young age. Back then I did not comprehend its complex definition; I used to simply when I was bored. I would tell my mother, "какая тоска," meaning "what boredom" whenever she made me do some chores around the house like cleaning our kitchen coop.
When we migrated to the US, "toska" took a new significance. It now symbolized the ache I felt in my heart every time I thought of the family I left behind in Kazakhstan. I remember once I sat on a beach in San Francisco looking out at the ocean. My dad asked me what I was looking at and I simply responded, "Kazakhstan."
I grew annoyed and angry at "toska" because I did not want to miss and long for my old home. I wanted to be set free from what felt like a heavy chain constantly reminding me of my unhappiness. Over some years I formed a new home in the US and began to forget about my home in Kazakhstan. But "toska" remained. Now it was a desperate yearning but I did not know what for.
I moved to Venezuela and then back to the US and I felt the pang of "toska" more than ever. I longed for my old home in Kazakhstan, Venezuela, Sacramento... I missed the friends I had made in every place I lived, the cultures of the people I met, and the memories I made in the three homes I acquired.
As I began to feel more comfortable in Reno, though, I began to appreciate "toska." Had it not been for the longing I felt about the people and experiences in my life, I would forget them. I would not treasure the wonderful things that happened in my life had "toska" not been there to constantly remind of them. "Toska" is a word that should not be translated to another language because even a novel would not be able to fully explain the depth of significance it holds for me and many people like myself.
A big part of its meaning, at least for me, is held in the fact that it is a Russian word. Translating it would render away a big chunk of the meaning and what would be left would never be enough to fully explain it.
"Toska" was a feeling I dreaded, hated even, for most of my life. Nevertheless, I have learned that without it, life would lose a great deal of its beauty and substance. "Toska" forces people to remember and treasure their lives, even if it does do so in a way that demands to be felt.
Any thoughts/comments on this response to the prompt would be greatly appreciated.
I like how you use a word to tell about your heritage and fit the prompt. Some parts feel very repetitive, maybe try to shorten it a little, and not repeat the same basic ideas over and over
