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Re:How to Exclaim by hasoleju on Friday October 27, 2023 @02:49AM (#38035457)
> German doesn’t have a word for “mind”. Does that mean Germans don’t understand the concept?

As a german native speaker I belive "Bewusstsein" is the german word for "mind".

Interesting fact: "Bewusst - sein" written in two words is retranslated word by word to something like: "Beeing mindful"

Re:How to Exclaim by Kezzo on Friday October 27, 2023 @02:54AM (#38035485)
I would translates "Bewusst sein" as "being conscious".
Re:How to Exclaim by hasoleju on Friday October 27, 2023 @03:03AM (#38035539)
I agree. This is a better translation.
Re:How to Exclaim by hnbad on Friday October 27, 2023 @03:44AM (#38035777)
Depends. It can also mean "being aware (of something)": "(sich etw.) bewusst sein". In that sense I guess mindfulness could be translated this way (in case you're wondering, the German term for mindfulness is just "Mindfulness", just like the German term for computer is "Computer").
Re:How to Exclaim by gdprrrr on Friday October 27, 2023 @08:05AM (#38037403)
Mindfulness is often translated as Achtsamkeit
Re:How to Exclaim by qwertox on Friday October 27, 2023 @10:06AM (#38038586)
I'd go a bit more with "being (self-)aware". Being conscious sounds a bit more like a (positive) medical condition, compared to being unconscious, while awareness is more of a mindful thing.
Re:How to Exclaim by hnbad on Friday October 27, 2023 @04:00AM (#38035868)
Like most "language X has no word for Y" or "language X has a thousand words for Y" claims, it's true in a trivial sense and false in a practical sense.

Yes, there is no exact translation for "mind" that carries with it every contextual sense the word can have in English. Word-for-word translations generally don't work very well in any pair of languages.

German does however have plenty of words that have the same meaning as "mind" when used in the same context: Bewusstsein (consciousness), Verstand (reason), Geist (spirit/intellect), Gedanken (thoughts), Gehirn (brain), Meinung (opinion), Phantasie (imagination), Denkweise (way of thinking), Gemüt (disposition) and so on. So does German have no word for "mind" or a dozen?

Daniel Dennett created a nice word for such claims: "deepity". A statement that seems insightful (deep) at first but turns out to be trivial if you spend a few seconds reflecting on it.

German doesn't have a word for "mind" because it's an English word and there's a dozen words that already express the same ideas in every possible context. If you find a concrete context in which there is no word sufficiently expressing the same idea, that's when you create a new one or borrow one: like zeitgeist, a German word that could just as well have been translated as "spirit of the times" or angst, another German word that literally means fear or dread.

Re:How to Exclaim by uxcolumbo on Friday October 27, 2023 @05:10AM (#38036237)
Thanks for clarifying.

A shame that article dismissed this so easily - doesn't paint a good picture on the author and makes me question what else did the author skim over.

Re:How to Exclaim by tgv on Friday October 27, 2023 @08:36AM (#38037636)
denken; Meinung, Ansicht; Gedanken; Denkweise; Geist; Verstand.

But the point may have been made im Scherz, an expression that may exist in English, but to which some of its transatlantic speakers have an ambivalent relation.

Re:How to Exclaim by jjgreen on Friday October 27, 2023 @09:13AM (#38037998)
It would explain why there have been no German psychologists nor philosophers, ..., wait ...