“Hvileløs is a Norwegian word for restless. But restless doesn’t come within a mile of being as restless as hvileløs, which evokes someone who is fitty restless — as restless as a bewildered bedbug. Norwegians have a word for that, too: forvirre veggelus. Which, again, is ten times as bewildered as your average American bewildered bedbug.

“This is by way of saying that Norwegian words for me convey, for me at least, an intensity of feeling that English words don’t. Someone asks me in English, “What do you mean?” and that’s all there is to it. “What do you mean?” But when someone asks me in Norwegian, “What mean you?” Hva mener De? it instantly suggests layers of implications, paving the way for going back generations if one cares to pursue it.

“Growing up in a bilingual family meant that nothing ever had to suffer in translation. If restless wasn’t restless enough for what we were describing, we could always use hvileløs. When it came to language, we had the best of both worlds.

“From babyhood on I heard two languages flowing in and out of each other as smoothly as two streams converging.”

Young, Carrie. Nothing To Do But Stay. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991. pp 99-100.