English is such an impoverished language

That’s what I say, jokingly, every time I discover that English doesn’t have that particular word I’m looking for to distinguish between two natural concepts. And it’s a joke, because of course English is a huge language, what with it swallowing up several other languages wholesale and then just misspelling all the words a lot. (It’s something Norwegians seriously say about Norwegian, though.) But, like, for instance — many languages have words to distinguish between “a 24 hour period” and “a day”, and English doesn’t, so that’s awkward. And Norwegian has different words for “acting suspicious” and “being suspicious of others”. English is such an impoverished language, man! (Here’s where you pull out your OED and say “but see? here’s one!” and point to a word that has three hits on Google as evidence that English really does have that word.) Joking aside, I there’s one area where English really does seem to have a lack of words/concepts that do make a difference — where you can see…