Sonder

Being bilingual leads to occasional curious discoveries — for example, how one language has a word for something the other doesn’t.

The other day, my mom asked me if English has a word for сдохнуть. In Russian, it’s a derogatory version of “to die” (don’t ask me why she was researching this particular word). You’d use сдохнуть when referring to an enemy you truly hate, someone who finally perishes. I thought about it and couldn’t come up with an exact English equivalent. “Die like a dog” communicates the idea, but it’s not a single word.

Another example is the English word commitment or committed. It’s widely used, yet no single-word equivalent in Russian captures the same meaning.

But this note isn’t even about comparing languages. Sometimes you discover totally new linguistic concepts.

The word sonder caught my attention a couple of months ago, but then I forgot it. Then recently, my thirteen-year-old daughter mentioned it, and my curiosity was reignited. It’s a relatively new word — maybe even slang — so it might not appear in traditional dictionaries. But I immediately understood its meaning:

The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

Some more notes:

It’s the awareness that each person you see is the protagonist of their own story, with their own history, dreams, and struggles — just like you are the protagonist of yours.