A combination of Liebe (love) and Kummer (grief, sorrow) that refers to the state of mind of people whose love life is not going well, especially the sorrow felt by jilted lovers.Note on pronunciation: The "ie" is pronounced like English "ee", not like English "eye". The "u" is a short "oo" as in "foot".
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Hi Ulrich, I think this is a wonderful word, and I can't think of an equivalent in English. although at one time or another, all, or at least most, of us have needed to use it. What is the book about? I love the title.
@Marlene: Thx.
The succinct title of the book, Moselfahrt aus Liebeskummer, is hard to translate gracefully--the literal meaning is "Moselle River Trip due to Liebeskummer". It's a novella, written in the 30s, describing a trip along and on the Mosel (Moselle) river during which the narrator tries to overcome his Liebeskummer. It contains loving descriptions of the river, the villages that line it, and the people who grow wine there--I lived in one of these villages when I went to elementary school.
Upon rereading passages of it, though, I must confess that the title is perhaps the best part of the book!
Hi Ulrich, I wanted to draw your attention to a review of Alice Munro in the Times book review:
"The Germans must have a term for it. Doppelgedanken, perhaps: the sensation, when reading, that your own mind is giving birth to the words as they appear on the page. Such is the ego that in these rare instances you wonder, “How could the author have known what I was thinking?”
I think the quote suggests that the reviewer shares what your blog has repeatedly shown, that the Germans are masters at coming up with words that precisely identify states of mind. Liebeskummer is yet another example.
@Heika: Thx for pointing this review out. I retrieved the review from our pile of newspapers to be recycled (I had misied it last week).
Your quote, made even more compelling b/c it is the opening paragraph of the review, confirms, as you say, that it is easy to coin new terms on the spot in German by hitching together two independent words (often nouns, but not necessarily so). Doppelgedanke is an example--I've never seen it in German, but Germans would understand it in the context in which it is offered, provided they get the allusion to the well-established Doppelgänger.
I'm also, of course, very much taken by the 'official' acknowledgment of this capability of German in the paragraph and amazed that the reviewer thinks that way, that she finds it--apparently--convenient, at times, to 'think in German'.
It certainly motivates me to continue with my word-of-the-month threads. But I also want to say that English offers coinages that have no equivalent in German, and I may create a thread soon dealing with this complementary topic.
That's an interesting topic, the English coinages that have no real equivalent in German. I wonder if you will find in English--and maybe you will--the kind of words I find so delightful in German, those compounds reflecting, very precisely, a particular state of mind. Not all of your German examples have done that but several have and I like them better than their English counterparts, if not equivalents, for instance, Fraidy cat versus Angsthase. I do hope you will continue with your words of the month. I really enjoy them.
The standard examples of English phrases w/o real equivalent in German are "fair play" and "common sense"--they have been used like that in German long before the current tsunami of English words started to hit German, which includes words for which there is no need at all, like "game", whose connotations are in no way different from that of German Spiel. In teen speak, online, advertising etc German presents itself now as a mixture of German and English. I am, in fact, interested in seeing how all of this will pan out in the end--i.e. if this will blow over as a fad or will have a lasting impact on German, e.g. significantly increase its vocabulary. My guess would be that the latter will happen...
The upshot is that if I want to start a thread on English terms with no real cognates in German, the situation is made more complicated by this state of affairs. In any case, I'm starting a page where I collect candidate phrases--I need certainly more than "fair play" and "common sense".
Beautiful word, Liebeskummer, and there is a Dutch equivalent, liefdesverdriet. It is really amazing that there is no English word for it. It happens sometimes that I'm trying to translate an English expression into Dutch, and there just is no right word. I will remember to let you know, Ulrich.
@mac: Please do!
I moved my last comment to a new thread, "The English invasion".
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