Can't think of the right word? Perhaps you need to borrow one from elsewhere, writes John Mullan

The English language is quick to admit that it does not always have that je ne sais quoi. When it cannot translate a word or phrase it usually takes possession of it. Now a London-based agency, Today Translations, has offered some new examples of words that English will need to purloin. It has consulted its network of more than 1,000 translators to establish a top 10 ten of words for which it is hardest to find English equivalents.

Number one in their untranslatability stakes is ilunga. This is from Tshiluba, a Bantu language spoken in south-eastern Congo and Zaire. It apparently refers to a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time but never tolerate it a third time. You do know that kind of person, don't you? Once you have the word you realise there is one ilunga in every office.

Similarly, are we not all sometimes afflicted by a pochemuchka - Russian for a person who asks a lot of questions, and number nine in the list? And though the number 10 choice, the Albanian kiloshar, does seem readily translatable as loser, doesn't its Albanian cadence make it uniquely crestfallen?

Some entries are ripe for borrowing for their very mystery. Fifth on the list is altahmam, Arabic for a kind of deep sadness, and seventh is saudade, Portuguese for a certain type of longing.

The translators who suggested these must know the unique feelings the terms denote, but with a little illustration I am sure we would be willing to adopt them. After all, English has already adopted untranslatable foreign words for melancholy: ennui, for example.

It is less clear what special quality inheres in number eight, selathirupavar, Tamil for a sort of truancy. But if you think that English is unreceptive to Tamil, think again. We have happily adopted Tamil words such as catamaran, poppadom and the invaluable pariah.

There are some items that we perhaps do not need. Number four is naa, a word only used in the Kansai area of Japan, to emphasise statements or agree with someone: we have "right", of course. Number six is gezellig, Dutch for cosy, but English has already lifted gemütlich from German for that reassuring, bourgeois homeliness that prevails in both nations.

Number three, however, is a genuinely indispensable item: shlimazl, Yiddish for a chronically unlucky person. How did we live without the word for so long?