#13: Feðgar

I've already touched on untranslatable words in a previous post, but the truth is that "translatability" as a general concept doesn't really exist at all. At best, translation is merely a form of approximation. It's all about finding the "closest match" to a word in a different language, and when you do that, chances are that some subtle aspect of the original word-- perhaps its connotation, or maybe an extra layer of meaning, or something encoded in the actual sound of the word-- will be lost. This is perhaps best seen in words that describe family relations, like the Icelandic word feðgar.

In many languages, there is a distinction between male and female cousins-- in Romanian, for instance, the words are văr and verișoară, respectively. English doesn't make this distinction, although we do distinguish between nephews and nieces whereas many other languages do not; the Italian nipote, for example, can mean "niece," "nephew," or "grandchild." Furthermore, some languages (like Thai and Bengali) distinguish between older and younger siblings, and many others have dedicated words for all of the various in-laws that you love so much. But the Icelandic feðgar and its cognates in other Nordic languages like Faroese are unique; as far as I can tell, there is not a comparable word in most (or any?) other languages.

Feðgar is used to denote a father-son pair. In most languages, that relationship needs to be expressed using a clunky phrase: thus In English, if you want to describe the relationship between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, you'd have to say something like "Vader and Luke are father and son." Or you can say "Vader is Luke's father," but that only really describes half of the relationship. It's possible to bypass this all entirely in Icelandic, though, because you can simply say Vader og Luke eru feðgar.

"Gakktu til liðs við mig, og saman við getum drottnað á Vetrarbrautinni sem feðgar!"

Since it always describes two people, feðgar is by its very nature a plural word; there is no singular form (just use faðir/pabbi, father, or sonur, son, to describe half of the pair if you need to). And, as you might expect, there are similar words that you can use to describe other close familial relationships. For instance, Vader and Leia would be feðgin (father and daughter), Padmé and Luke would be mæðgin (mother and son), and Padmé and Leia would be mæðgur (mother and daughter). All are, like  feðgar, exclusively plural and wonderfully concise... which is always appreciated in a language that contains so many enormous, polysyllabic words!

WORD SUMMARY:

feðg/ar, -a (m pl.): father and son

Posted in: Family, Nouns, Untranslatable