Cabinet

Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes “a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

For anyone that speaks more than one language or has even attempted to speak a second, accurately translating between the two is a common problem. I know that as someone who speaks Korean more or less fluently, I invent words, or use them out of context all the time. On my last visit, I was told I had great pronunciation and a very convincing accent, but my grammar and vocabulary shifted between that of an uneducated village boy and an elementary school student. I don’t really mind, and it has rarely put me in a difficult position. It’s amusing to watch the expressions of the person I’m speaking to change from confusion to understanding to amusement within a few milliseconds.

When you look at the word mamihlapinatapai, it kind of leaves something to be desired from the English language. I’ve realized that it’s pretty straightforward to translate a word from English into another language, but to do the opposite requires a lot more work. I think by having a single word to describe something like mamihlapinatapai, you are more prone to recognizing it when it happens. There are a lot of Korean words that I wouldn’t know how to being to explain, and I feel like this is why ancient Chinese proverbs sound so ridiculous in English.

Still, there are some good times to be had in broken translations. I was once given a suggestion and told it was just “a fruit of [her] mind”—meaning it came from her imagination. Something poetic about that isn’t there? And then there was that one time I was asked to be raped.

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