The swedes know it too. In Swedish, tår is a cup of coffee. If you are on your second cup of coffee, you say påtår. And because Swedish people love coffee so much, there is also the tretår – meaning the third cup of coffee, for when your 5-minute coffee break is not so short after all. This is a typical example for an untranslatable word, as tretår means so much more than the simple periphrasis “the third cup of coffee” could ever convey.
German also has quite a few of these untranslatable words. One with less positive connotations, but nonetheless capable of bringing up quite a few emotions is “Kabelsalat”. The word itself means so much as “cable salad”, the result of having a computer, screen, telephone, speakers, wi-fi router, laptop charger, phone charger, etc. plugged into one power strip – you get the idea. Simply hearing the word can be enough to ruin someone’s mood. We don’t know of any word in another language like it… if you do, let us know!
Nevertheless, we hope you get the chance to have someone pour you a tretår from time to time and never be confronted or have to deal with an intense “Kabelsalat” in the office or at home. Or anywhere, really.