Recently I was trying to write a brief email message in which I expressed concern to a friend about her fatalistic attitude toward some self-destructive behaviors. But that's another story. As is often the case with me, I experienced the tip of the tongue phenomenon while writing. For some reason, I was convinced that there was an expressive French phrase to replace "fatalistic."
I asked several colleagues for assistance, but they were unable to help. Then I perused a long web page of French expressions which was fascinating but could not offer an answer. The closest I came was laissez-faire and c'est la vie, neither of which sounded serious enough. Later I realized that que sera, sera was closer, but on thinking about it, I couldn't quite figure out exactly what language that phrase represented. According to this Wikipedia article, it's a bastardization of a bastardization, which explains my confusion.
In all my searching for fatalistic phrases, the Japanese language won hands down with shikata ga nai, which can be used to describe either a courageous endurance or a fatalistic helplessness according, once again, to Wikipedia's entry.
My friend has now adopted Que Sera, Sera as her theme song and shikata ga nai as her life philosophy.
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7 comments:
Perhaps your friend could have a whole album of inspirational theme songs. There are several disco songs which have themes of surrmounting great obstacles. I find inspiration in musical theater- shows like The Sound of Music, or Rocky Horror.
Ha! I love expressions in other languages that precisely describe something which may not have an equivalent in english. The germans have some great ones, like "weltschmerz". In french, I like "jena se qua" and ennui (though the latter is just "boredom" i guess).
My favorite other-language words or expressions are Yiddish. There's something very satisfying about words like schlep, kvetch, and schmaltzy.
I loved the article on TOT. Ten years ago I would get so frustrated when my mom could not remember certain words or names, any of which seemed quite obvious to me. As much as it might seem like a cliche to say so, it's my turn now.
I grew up in an Italian household, and some of the expressions are hilarious...right out of the Sopranos. Stunad (stoo-nod')means stupid. Oobatz means crazy. Of course, the hand gestures are required to get the full meaning.
Have you thought about doing your website project on interesting/funny phrases? Just looking at other people's comments makes me think that almost everyone would be interested in a site like that.
Is the phrase you were looking for "fait accompli"?
I also love to pepper my speech with foreign language phrases, though I think most are American versions of foreign language phrases.
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