vikungen:

Alkanadi:

jagr2808:Televidbruo, video-bruo, televidneĝo...

do these work worldwide?

Okay, can anyone else come up with something that is impossible to translate.

- Jeg er glad i deg (!)

- Oppholdsvær (rain break/break in the rain (?)

- Koselig (convivial; also gezellig in Dutch)[/i]

- Tilfart (?)

Anything can be translated once the meaning is known. The illusion of being untranslatable surely comes from the deep cultural association a word or phrase has with the language in which it is expressed. Oftentimes it isn't so unique to the language, because many language groups share similar words/phrases. Just because a single word is rendered in several words in translation (or vice-versa), it is not a failure of translation. 'Oppholdsvær' above is really just a compound of words, which is common to Germanic languages.

Bemused:

Alkanadi:Try to come up with a word, or a concept, which cannot be translated into Esperanto.

Yobbo

Wouldn't huligano be close enough? Or what about bubaĉo? Perhaps that is better as Yobbo seems to refer to a young person

My Collins dictionary defines Yobbo as agresema kaj malafabla junulo.

Incidentally while fishing around for a translation, I noticed that PIV seems to have got it wrong in defining 'brutalo' as a person. The base form is clearly brutala (see Tekstaro).

I was thinking initially about something using 'brut' (brutcerba junulo) and noticed the next entry in PIV.

It is plausible that many languages have words for things that can't be succinctly expressed in some other language.

And such words may, in the original language, be pregnant with all sorts of associations which seem to get lost in a phrase to convey the meaning in another language.

Think about 'krokodili' in Esperanto and then look up the translation into English in Wells's dictionary. Wells doesn't even attempt a translation into English of 'Esperantujo'. How would you define that in English? Even aliĝilo seems to have more meaning than 'enrolment form'.

This week's New Scientist contains a very interesting article on words for certain emotional states drawn from other languages that don't have equivalents in English. You might, on first refection think, that in that area, at least, there would be common ground.

Wells doesn't even attempt a translation into English of 'Esperantujo'. How would you define that in English?

Esperantujo - the collective community of Esperanto speakers and culture (more rarely: Esperantio).

I don't have any particular emotional association with the word Esperantujo.

Alkanadi:

jagr2808:Also a word I think exist almost only in the scandinavian languages and dutch is "pålegg" (in norwegian), which means something you put on bread or in a sandwich.

We have it in English

En: Spread or sandwich spread
Eo: Sandviĉ-sterno

Just wanted to note that pålegg/pålägg/beleg/Belag/etc. is much broader than "(sandwich) spread". It refers to literally any food you put on a piece of bread, not just the butterish or pastish kind you spread with a knife. It can be cheese, meat, chocolate sprinkles (popular "beleg" in the Netherlands), salad, tomato slices, pickles, berries, even catfood would be called pålegg/pålägg/beleg/Belag once you put it on or between a piece of bread.

"Bread topping" would be a much more accurate translation. And I guess it can be described in Esperanto with pansurmetaĵo or something.

Oh, I just remembered a word for which I have not found a translation yet in any language I speak but Japanese. It's the word 弾き語り (hikigatari).

It comes from the verbs 弾く (hiku, "to play [a string instrument]" ) and 語る (kataru, "to tell [a story]" ) (literally translated to Esperanto something like "lud-rakonto" ), and it's a word for the act of singing a song while accompanying oneself on a string instrument (usually a piano or guitar).

I'm slightly annoyed English and Dutch don't have easier ways to say things like "a song in which I/you/he/she accompanies my/your/him/herself". (That I know of.) In Japanese it's just 弾き語り曲 (hikigatari kyoku), 曲 (kyoku) being the word for a song or piece of music. Does Esperanto perhaps offer a solution? Of course it does not have to be a word specifically for string instruments or piano or guitar, but it can be.
　

Edit: After writing this I came up with "memakompano" as a possibility, and only then found out "self-accompaniment" is actually a (rare-ish) word used in English too. (As well as "zelfbegeleiding" in Dutch.) Looks like I reinvented the word through Esperanto, haha.
Although "self-accompaniment song" or "self-accompanying song" or whatever still sounds very clunky. But I guess "memakompana muzikaĵo" kind of works. Or even "gitara memakompano" or "piane memakompana muzikaĵo". Yay for Esperanto flexibility.