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Comment by captainmuon | Hacker News Reader

I really like German for its expressivity. I would not say it is more expressive than English, but differently. There are many things that are easy to say in German but very hard in other languages, and vice versa.

"Schadenfreude" is well-known, but one word I wanted to use often in recent times is "Missgunst" or "missgönnen": When you don't want somebody to have something. It's not jealousy, it is resenting somebody for their fortune. Google translate offers "resentment", but it doesn't fit perfectly, as that can also mean you just hold a grudge towards somebody. "Missgönnen" is the opposite of "gönnen", which means to be generous, to grant something, to be happy for somebody's fortune.

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You can say things like

  Eifersucht ist Leidenschaft, die mit 
  Eifer sucht was Leiden schafft.

Meaning:

  Jealousy is a passion, that 
  zealously searches what brings suffering.

By the way, if you enjoy german you should try learning czech, it's similarly lyrical.

A Czech told me that Czech is possibly the most complicated language of the world. Not really difficult but you have to learn hundreds of different forms.

Oh you should try Hungarian then ... Studied both for a while. At least for me Hungarian was magnitudes worse to learn.

Still both languages have interesting concepts.

Czech is complex, but there are way less exceptions compared to german. Pronunciation is literal, if you know how a word is spelled you know how to pronounce it.

Then it has high phonemic orthography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonemic_orthography).

I always enjoyed Elefantenrennen: Literally meaning "Elephant Racing".

(If anyone is curious and can't read DE wikipedia, its when a truck tries to pass another truck on a highway and can't get by immediately, thus slowing all the traffic behind.)

Begrudge seems like a good fit for Missgunst.

Thanks!

> It's not jealousy, it is resenting somebody for their fortune.

I think in the Christian tradition, this would be called envy, in Dutch it would be Afgunst, the German version of the Dutch Wikipedia page for Afgunst is Missgunst. Of course, die Missgunst ist nicht ganz der Neid.

Envy/Neid to me means that there is something you want that the other person has, which isn't required for Missgunst. (and envy doesn't have to be as negative)

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