05/05/2023
II. Essay writing practice
A. Quote: "The spirit of a language is most clearly expressed in its untranslatable words."
- Baroness Marie ‘Freifrau’ von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830 – 1916, Austrian writer;
for more info, see https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sophsupp_gallery/55/)
Prompt: Write a formal essay in which you explain what you believe this quotation means and reflect on how
it relates to your studies of linguistics and foreign languages.
B. Work in groups to:
1. brainstorm ideas about the quotation and the prompt
Brainstorming:
1. Idiomatic expressions
2. Culture specific terms (spaghettata, sobremesa)/ Translation strategies
3. Tv series show, reading books
1. Spoken language
2. Stereotypes based on untranslatable words
3. Cultural background of the translator (he decides if translating some terms or not-)
2.Italian dialects: untranslatable words
1. Native speaker clearly knows the specific meaning of idiomatic expressions, differently from a basic
learner or a student.
1. You don’t even know how to explain it (because we use them every day without even noticing it)
