#and somehow sobremesa always get mentioned in the 'untranslatable' categories so I tried not to mention it

[spanishskulduggery]

What word or words do you wish we had in English? For example, I love estadounidense. It’s so much easier than saying “person from the United States”.

estadounidense is such a good example lol - the closest thing we have in English, that is totally informal, is calling it "USian"

I think there are a handful of words that I've come across where you can't totally translate because it's like... a visceral feeling you only understand if you know the culture?

mala leche is a big one; I can never quite describe it to people, but when you get more used to the culture you see mala leche and part of you makes that noise like you just touched something really hot and immediately withdraw, that's the gut reaction to how bad the vibe is haha

Also the verb madrugar is hard to get quite right; because it means "to get up early", but this can also be something more like "to get up so early the sun hasn't come out yet"

I think estrenar is another one that's a little more difficult to translate or I wish there were a better way to explain it; the closest you can get is "to debut" (and same idea for acting, "to debut" or "to star"), or "to show off (for the first time)" like with clothes

...And this one is probably more relevant for Spanish-speaking countries or countries with stricter naming policies, but tocayo/a I wish had a better translation in English

The equivalent is "namesake", but tocayo/a can mean "someone with the same name as you" - so it could be "someone you were named after" like a relative or a saint, like you had a grandparent named Robert and now you're Robbie or Roberta, that's a tocayo/a even if it's a genderswapped version (which they also did for saints like John turns to Juan or Juana) - but it could also just be like "yeah there are three girls named Ashley in my class" or "my name is Maria and so is hers" etc. and that's also tocayo/a

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There are also some words that just don't have the same meaning anymore, ones that make sense in some languages but not English

The idea of tutear "to speak informally with someone" literally "to tú someone" is hard to express in English where in general we address everyone the same, but in older English it was "to thou" someone because we used to have more emphasis on classes and social standing - something that makes total sense in many Asian countries, or countries that use a more formal or informal register, but something very much lost in some English-speaking countries