Description

Created to prompt greater reflection about the nature of language and the emotions, the Prompts Card Set | Untranslatable Words is a set of (20) cards which explain the meaning behind untranslatable words from around the world. These cards have been designed to reflect the excitement we find in encountering and old photograph or an object in a flea market or antique stall, one that feels familiar yet foreign and is thus infinitely evocative.

We’re hugely dependent on language to express how we really feel, and yet words often feel curiously vague or frustratingly inaccurate. There are lots of moods, needs and feelings that our own language has not yet properly pinned down. The perfect word - even if it comes from abroad - helps us explain ourselves to other people, and its existence quietly reassures us (and everyone else) that a state of mind is not really rare, just rarely spoken of.

This set of cards define some of our favorite words from the world's languages and married them up with complementary images to create cards that bring some of our most important feelings into focus. 

Example Card - YŪGEN (Japanese): Gives a name to a mood in which one feels that the universe as a whole possesses a mysterious and elusive beauty. Moonlight, snow on distant mountains, birds flying very high in the evening sky, and watching the sun rise over the ocean all feed this sensibility.