What is it to miss somebody? “I miss you”—it sounds like an action that I’m taking, something that I’m doing, maybe even something I’m choosing, in the same vein as “I listen to sad music” or “I finish the pint of ice cream”. But you don’t really have a choice when you miss somebody: it’s a thing that happens to you; it’s a state of being; it’s a filter that interposes itself between you and the world around you.
I think the French say it much better: “Tu me manques”. Literally, “You are missing from me.” Isn’t that really how it feels, fundamentally? When you miss someone deeply, it’s like walking around without your glasses on; everything around you seems different, and even though you can keep functioning, you’re constantly noticing that something is not right. It’s not something that you’re doing (“I’m noglassesing today!”) it’s something that you’re living (“My glasses are absent”).
This led me down the rabbit-hole of how other languages talk about missing someone. Disclaimer: I don’t speak most of these languages, so this is the understanding of somebody looking at English-language dictionaries and etymologies. But even if some of the nuances are a bit off, I found a lot of value in having some slightly different angles to look at “missing”.
- German: Ich vermisse dich. “Vermissen” (to miss) comes from the verb “missen”, which also means “to miss”, but seeing it in that form is rare. Instead, the Germans add the prefix “ver-“, which among other things can be a signal that the main verb has gone wrong. Add “ver-” to “gießen” (to pour) and you get “vergießen” (to spill). Add it to “fahren” (to drive) and you’ve gotten lost (“verfahren”). Suppose we could transliterate this into English: instead of spilling, you “badpour”, and instead of getting lost, you “baddrive”. In that case, Germans never miss you, they always badmiss you. The state of missing is not a neutral thing; built into the word itself is the sense that something is awry.
- Old Norse: Cykeln saknar ett hjul. In Old Norse, you can add the suffix -na to a word to show that an action is in the process of beginning—that’s the “inchoative aspect”, which we don’t really have in English, but which you can find in Latin, Lithuanian and Russian, among others. In Old Norse, if you take “fǫlr” (pale) and add -na, you get “fǫlna” (to wither). If you take “sofa” (to sleep) and add -na, you get “sofna” (to fall asleep). If you take “saka” (to do harm) and add -na, you get sakna… to miss. When you miss somebody in Old Norse, you’re talking overtly about the pain you’re feeling from their absence. And when you miss somebody in Danish or Norwegian, (“savne”), or Icelandic or Swedish (“sakna”), it comes from that same Old Norse root. Can we make an English equivalent? How about using en-… to wither becomes “to enpale”; to fall asleep is “to ensleep”, and to miss is “to be enharmed”.
- Thai: ฉัน คิดถึง คุณ (Chan khidthung khun). The middle word, meaning “miss”, can also be used in the sense of “thinking about”, and so it can be used in more situations than feeling the absence of a loved one. However, the etymology is beautiful: it’s a compound word, คิด (to think) plus ถึง (to reach, to attain). In Thai, when you miss somebody, your thoughts reach out to them—and here’s what I think is the beautiful part: your thoughts actually arrive at the person you’re missing. Missing somebody becomes not a disconnection, but a connection; not a cleaving apart, but a connecting together.
Missing somebody is a deep experience that’s hard to put into words, and so I love that different languages have focused on different parts of that reality. The next time you think to yourself, “I miss you”, consider the richness of that very human state. Ich vermisse dich, I badmiss you. Cykeln saknar ett hjul, I am enharmed. Tu me manques, you are missing from me. ฉัน คิดถึง คุณ, my thoughts reach out to you and connect us.