Welcome to DutchDabbles meets Mythbusters! There’s a word in Dutch that’s widely considered pretty much untranslatable, at least into English. The word is gezellig, and it is indeed a bit of a tricky one. How untranslatable is gezellig, and what does it actually mean? Let me tell you all about it.
I’m going to jump straight to the point here. Gezellig is so tricky to translate because it doesn’t have a single, well-defined meaning. It can mean multiple things, depending on the situation, and while you can find a perfectly fine English translation for each of these instances, there’s no English word that describes all of them at the same time. In that regard, it’s kind of untranslatable, but the different meanings can easily be described on their own – although there is something that makes it pretty impossible to grasp the full meaning in a single English word for each of them, too.
These are two main uses:
Cozy
The trickiest one, and one of the ways gezellig is used most in Dutch, is to describe a situation in which a group of people are enjoying some slow, lazy time off in a cozy environment – think comfy Sunday afternoons by the fireplace in winter. Cozy kind of does the trick here, although you can easily be cozy on your own, but for something to be gezellig, multiple people have to be present – remember this small detail.
Fun
You don’t have to wait for winter break for things to get gezellig, though. Your average birthday party can also be gezellig, in which case it basically just means fun. You’re hanging out with people you like, you’re having a few drinks and some nice bites, and everybody’s just as happy as can be. Gezellig can also be used in this way to describe an afternoon of shopping with your friends, a night out into town, or something similar. Again, while you can have plenty of fun on your own in English, this version of gezellig also means other people have to be there with you.
Fun #2
While gezellig usually refers to a situation, it can also refer to a person. Just like someone can be a fun person to hang out with, someone can be gezellig in Dutch. It just means it’s nice to be around them, they’re usually positive and happy, and you’re bound to have a good time when you’re with them. Similarly, a place can also be gezellig – een gezellig café is a cozy, nice bar with a relaxing vibe.
Anticipating gezelligheid
As it turns out, the Dutch like to anticipate feelings they hope to experience in the future while they’re making plans. I’ve already touched upon this in the article about the word lekker, in anticipation of a cup of coffee tasting delicious when someone asks if you’d like to have one of said cups.
The same goes for gezellig. When you ask a Dutch person if they’d like to hang out Friday night, they might well answer Ja, gezellig. Obviously, there’s no way of knowing whether it will actually be any fun, they’re merely assuming it will be – no pressure.
Sarcasm and negative use
Naturally, a word used so often will eventually find its way into the realms of sarcasm and opposite meaning, and gezellig is no exception there. When you’re out hanging with friends, but you have to leave because you have work in the morning, your friends might say Nou, gezellig – I’ve done an entire post about the word nou as well. In this case, it literally means the opposite: you’re not being gezellig, because you’re leaving early.
In a similar use, you’ll hear it being said by a parent whose child is having a bit of a tantrum. They might say something like Doe even gezellig (Eng: Be gezellig for a while), as in: stop nagging and just enjoy the moment like the rest of us.
Long story short
Gezellig is a word that’s used a lot in Dutch, and it usually means either having a good time with friends, or to be in a cozy, warm situation – again, with others. While it’s not all difficult to translate any sentence containing the word gezellig into English, the tricky part is that for something to be gezellig, it both has to be cozy/fun, and other people have to be present.
The idea that gezellig is simply an incomprehensible feeling that’s in no way translatable into English, is pretty much just a myth, but the fact remains that there is no single word in the English language that describes all the details of the word, including the part where it’s always about multiple people, in a single go. With that in mind, I’d say the actual word itself is more or less untranslatable, even though you won’t really experience that when you’re translating a Dutch text into English.
Let’s finish off with a Dutch expression that is as true as anything: gezelligheid kent geen tijd – literally: “gezelligness” knows no time, or: time doesn’t exist when things are gezellig.
