How Do You Say that in English?

It always surprises and amazes me when I come across something that I can express in aother language, but don't know how to say it in English.

For instance, I can't sail in English. I'm sure that sounds strange to most people, but I had never been sailing until I was an exchange student in Sweden. My host family had a 30+ foot sailboat and we spent a couple of weeks sailing on the Baltic. Never having done it before, I learned all my terminology in Swedish....A couple of years later, a friend took a group out for an afternoon sail. She had asked before hand if any of us had been sailing before & I told her I had. Thus, she was expecting me to be able to help out. Unfortunately, I discovered that I couldn't sail in English when she called for me to do something and I had no idea what she wanted.

I just ran into a similar situation. My SO needed to meet up with someone who lives approximately an hour away, so they decided to meet about 1/2 way. They wanted someplace easy to find/hard to miss, and right off the freeway to make it easy. The perfect location turned out to be an Ikea.

This is the closest Ikea to me, but since it's 35 minutes away, I don't go often. This may be a good thing as I tend to spend more than I'd like to admit there. Unlike most ppl, I don't spend it on the furniture. Nope, I could spend tons of $ in that little area outside of the cashiers that sells Swedish food. Admittedly, Swedish cuisine isn't well-known; when was the last time someone said, "let's go out for Swedish tonight"? But, for me, it takes me right back to the time I spent there & there are things I really love that one just doesn't find anywhere in this area other than Ikea.

So, I wanted to ask my SO to pick up something for me.....but I didn't know what to call it in English.

Luckily, I was able to describe the items well enough that he figured it out. (Actually, I gotta give it up to my sweetie -- not only did he get the item I wanted/asked for, he also got me 3 or 4 other things that he knows I like. )

But, yeah, it's a very odd feeling to hear oneself saying, "I don't know how to say that in English," when English is one's native language.