Can you describe me what 'Sehnsucht' is, and how it is different from the Portuguese 'saudade'?

Answer 1

Rammstein uses it as "(sexual) longing".

Answer 2

That word Sehnsucht is derived out of the German language.
It is an expression or a feeling of something that is not there. The soul is searching for something. Yearning for something.
I do not know about the Latin American customs and wheter saudade is the same meaning. But in German its the most powerful expression you can imagine. Inviteably in poetry , folktales and folksongs or classical music.
Sehnsucht = searching = yearning for something........I am German hope I could explain so you could understand it.

Answer 3

you by now got your answer about Sehnsucht, and yes it is very similar to the portugese Saudade. My friends in Brazil often end their letters and msn-chats with Saudade, meaning they miss me (isn't that sweet..), or think back of the time I was over there, and regret I am not there right now.
I am Dutch, my german is ok, my english is better, and my portugese is ok passively (I can read a paper and grasp what people are talking about, but I don't speak it very well).
Love from Holland!

Answer 4

I love the word "sehnsucht." It is, to my (American English) understanding, an unfulfillable longing, an ever-present desire for something glimpsed but never seen in its entirety. I liken it to a mystical concept of seeking, but with a driving desire added in. There were 6 matches in imdb.com for movies or short films with this title. The one I know of is a 1921 lost film from F.W. Murnau, he of the famous classic "Nosferatu." This is rather apt, as anyone with a desire to see this lost film must, perforce, suffer this longing unfulfilled! ( I am one of those who has had the desire to see this unseeable film, as it stars one of my all-time favorite actors, Conrad Veidt.)

As for "saudade," I am not familiar with the term, but when I look it up in Alta Vista's Babel Fish, it translates to English as "homesickness." "Sehnsucht," incidentally, translated German to English on this same site, is "longing."

Answer 5

angelikabertrand is right; the Germans have several expressions that really can't be translated well into other languages, esp. English. Another one is "Weltschmerz", usually translated as "world sorrow", but it's deeper than that.

A commonly MISUSED word is "Angst", which means fear. In English, we usually mistakenly use it it to mean worry and/or sorrow.

When studying German, I was told (proudly!) by my native-German professor, that Germans had no expression for "fair play", a concept so important to people such as the British. Interesting, eh? Yes you could translate it literally, but it wouldn't mean the same thing.