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> We have an infinite palette of emotions and sensations, yet only a handful of words to describe them. (I am English, therefore particularly disadvantaged.) T
by FabHK 5y ago
> We have an infinite palette of emotions and sensations, yet only a handful of words to describe them. (I am English, therefore particularly disadvantaged.)
That strikes me as wrong - English is the language with the most words. Why would it be particularly poor in describing the emotional realm? (Presumably, the author means that the English with their stiff upper lip don't have much awareness of their emotions, but the author is specifically referring to words.)
- throwaway2333 5y agoMy intuition agrees with the quoted statement. I cannot make a coherent logical argument for it, but I agree with the author: other languages have a richer, more nuanced vocabulary for emotions. There are emotional-labels that only exist in other languages (e.g. German, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Greek, etc.) that simply have no equal in English (and in that case, we simply steal the word and pump up our total word count). I feel like English's main purpose is to get people to do things, by making them feel a certain way, or by being so vague and unspecific it can be interpreted in an endless amount of ways. Whereas with German it might be to be exact, and to have every single thing accounted for and labeled.
- kalimanzaro 5y agoThrowaway to your throwaway. My intuition tells me (Mandarin) Chinese is similar and thus they just might become the next century-old superpower. I guess emotional precision is too costly for the political class lol