Saudade - Similar Words in Other Languages

Similar Words in Other Languages

There are other words in other languages with similar meaning. Depending on the context, saudade can relate to the feeling of nostalgia or melancholy (melancolia in Portuguese), in which one feels an interior satisfaction because it is impossible to find something, but one never stops thinking that one is searching for it. It is an incompleteness that one unconsciously wants to never completely resolve. Saudade relates to the French regret, in which one feels a hard sentiment, but in a nostalgic sense. Saudade relates to the Spanish extrañar, in which one feels a missing part of oneself, which can never be completely filled by the thing you cannot have or get back. The word can also translate into the Spanish expression echar de menos, or extrañar—roughly equivalent to the Portuguese ter saudades: missing something or someone. The Greek word closest to saudade is νοσταλγία (nostalgia). Nostalgia also appears in the Portuguese language as in the many other languages with an Indo-European origin, bearing the same meaning of the Greek word "νοσταλγία". There is yet another word that, like 'saudade', has no immediate translation in English: λαχτάρα (lakhtara). This word encompasses sadness, longing and hope, as does the term saudade.

In Albanian, a direct translation of saudade is the word mall, which encompasses feelings of passionate longing, sadness, and at the same time an undefined laughter from the same source. Other variations which give different nuances to this word are: përmallim, përmallje, etc.

In the Torlak dialect of Bulgarian, spoken today in the easternmost part of Serbia and the remote southern mountains of Kosovo, there is an expression which corresponds more closely to the Japanese and Greek examples below, but can be compared to saudade in the broader sense of longing for the past. It is жал за младос(т) / žal za mlados(t) i.e., "yearning for one's youth." (Since the dialect has not been standardised as a written language it has various forms.) The term and the concept have been popularised in standard Serbian through short prose and plays by Vranje born fin-de-siècle writer Borisav Stanković.

Bosnian language has a term for the same type of feeling, sevdah, which comes from the Turkish term sevda via Arabic sawda, which in Turkish means "black bile." In Bosnian language, the term sevdah represents pain and longing for a loved one. Sevdah is also a genre of traditional music originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sevdah songs are very elaborate, emotionally charged and are traditionally sung with passion and fervor.

One translation of "saudade" into German is Wehmut (in Dutch weemoed); a fuzzy form of nostalgia. Or Weltschmerz, which is the general pain caused by an imperfect state of being or state of the world. The German word Sehnsucht, generally translated as "yearning" or "craving" deals with a deep, bittersweet sense of something lost, missing, or unattainable. Sehnsucht can also have a more positive, goal oriented connotation; an "aspirational saudade" that may drive one to reclaim, pursue or define the absent something.

In the Romanian language, the word dor bears a close meaning to "saudade". It can also stand for love or "desire" having a derivation in the noun dorinţă and the verb dori, both of them being translated usually by wish and to wish.

Saudade is said to be the only exact equivalent of the Welsh hiraeth and the Cornish hireth. It connotes homesickness tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed. Esperanto borrows the word directly, changing the spelling to accommodate Esperanto grammar, as saŭdado.

In English, the verb "to pine": To pine for somebody, something or some place that you miss deeply, to wish you could be there or have it again. A nostalgic yearning for something that may no longer exist, melancholic, fatalist overtone that the object of longing may never return.

The Slovenian language has a large number of words expressing the feeling of 'longing' hrepeneti, koprneti, pogrešati (literally to miss someone), nostalgija, melanholija. The verb koprneti and thereof derived noun koprnenje are the closest translations to embrace the fatalistic undertones of saudade.

The Finnish language has a word whose meaning corresponds very closely with saudade: kaiho. Kaiho means a state of involuntary solitude in which the subject feels incompleteness and yearns for something unattainable or extremely difficult and tedious to attain. Ironically, the sentiment of kaiho is central to the Finnish tango, in stark contrast to the Argentine tango, which is predominantly sensuous. Kaiho has religious connotations in Finland as well, since the large Lutheran sect called the Awakening (Finnish herännäiset, or körttiläiset more familiarly) consider central to their faith a certain kaiho towards Zion, as expressed in their central book Siionin Virret (Hymns of Zion). However, saudade does not involve tediousness. Rather, the feeling of saudade accentuates itself: the more one thinks about the loved person or object, the more one feels saudade. The feeling can even be creative, as one strives to fill in what is missing with something else or to recover it altogether.

In Korean, keurium (그리움) is probably closest to saudade. It reflects a yearning for anything that has left a deep impression in the heart—a memory, a place, a person, etc.

In Japan, saudade expresses a concept similar to the Japanese word natsukashii. Although commonly translated as "dear, beloved, or sweet," in modern conversational Japanese natsukashii can be used to express a longing for the past. It connotes both happiness for the fondness of that memory and goodness of that time, as well as sadness that it is no longer. It is an adjective for which there is no quite fitting English translation. It can also mean "sentimental," and is a wistful emotion. The character used to write natsukashii can also be read as futokoro 懐 and means "bosom," referring to the depth and intensity of this emotion that can even be experienced as a physical feeling or pang in one's chest—a broken heart, or a heart feeling moved.

In Armenian, "Saudade" is represented by "կարոտ" (karot) that describes the deep feeling of missing of something or somebody.

In Arabic, the word وجد (Wajd) means a state of transparent sadness caused by the memory of a loved one who is not near, it's widely used in ancient Arabic poetry to describe the state of the lover's heart as he or she remembers the long gone love. It's a mixed emotion of sadness for the loss, and happiness for having loved that person. In Turkish, the feeling of saudade is somewhat similar to hüzün. Its position in Turkey is similar to saudade in Portugal in that it's a melancholic feeling popular in art and culture following the fall of a great empire. However hüzün is closer to melancholy and depression in that it's associated with a sense of failure in life and lack of initiative.

The closest word to "saudade" in Indonesian is the "galau", which is a feeling or mood in which the person who has it feels sad and usually misses someone. It is often used by the Indonesian youth today and, although the word itself may be caused by various things (such as failing an exam), the most common causes are love-related, such as missing someone. Often, the person who is feeling it is nostalgic as well. It can last for hours, but it is almost always temporary.

In Hebrew, "Saudade" can be translated to "Ergah" ערגה which means yearning/longing/desire coupled with deep sadness. In Tamil, a similar feeling of love-sickness is expressed by the word pasalai (பசலை).