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> In Swedish... someone happy in the moment is called glad... Someone happy in the longer-term is called lycklig. And we are not just some millions of weirdos i

> In Swedish... someone happy in the moment is called glad... Someone happy in the longer-term is called lycklig. And we are not just some millions of weirdos in the northernmost of Europe. The Germans are froh when they are happy in the short term and glücklich when they are happy in the long term... Just because you don't have a dedicated word for something, doesn't mean that it is a foreign concept. In Arabic and Hebrew there's no dedicated verbs for "to have" or "to be" in the present tense, and yet these societies understand ownership and existence in the present perfectly. You can't take, like, two words from a language, and then say something meaningful about a whole society.

GuardianCaveman 3y ago
Yet other times the lack of that word denotes a different perspective on that subject. Short term or long term happiness isn’t differentiated in the untied states. I don’t think of happiness in terms of long or short term. Just as a temporary state that hopefully last a long time. Think of all the words we use to express love in English. In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love.
- xyzelement 3y ago
  Interesting point about English. You're right, having a single word for "I am happy the light turned green just as I approached the intersection" and "I have 10 children and I am proud of the kind of people they turned out to be" really blunts the nuance. In my parlance, I'd call the second thing "meaningful" but not everyone strives for meaning (or think it matters) so it kinda doesn't have the same mindshare as the "by-default-short-term" happy.
- cjohnson318 3y ago
  Y'all are saying that because Americans don't have a single term for "long term happiness" and a separate term for "short term happiness," then that creates some kind of blindspot for Americans. We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. > In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love. This sounds like a cultural norm around language use. There's examples of this in English. You might say, "I love lamp." That's weird, it's a non-standard use for the word "love," but people would give you the benefit of the doubt and note that you "like" the lamp.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - Groxx 3y ago
    Chinese is a particularly bad example since as a language it builds concepts out of multiple smaller terms far more explicitly than English.
  - Juliate 3y ago
    > We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. That's not the same as having a single word that embodies a specific concept, that helps/shorten the expression/sharing of it. If you don't have this single concept that stands for itself, and/or that you don't know the word, as long as you can't name it, it's hard if not impossible to see it. That's why we give a name to things or people we find/meet. See shades of white (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white), plural forms, different depending on the language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_grammatical_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_gramm...), love (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love) if only in Greek where it has at least 6 very distinct ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). But, also, that knack for ambiguity and second and third order meaning in apparently detached sentences in some languages, it has its own charms.
- pipodeclown 3y ago
  Yet you do think of some people as a happy or jolly people and others as gloomy. This is the difference that is denoted here where your trying to describe a more general long term state of mind of a person.
watwut 3y ago
OMG this.
halflife 3y ago
Actually, ״to be״ in Hebrew translates to להיות (l’hyot), depending on the context. “I want to be at home” “אני רוצה להיות בבית״
- WJW 3y ago
  Sure, but in most cases its conjugations are just left out entirely, as in "קר לי"; literally "cold to me" (I am cold). "אני רעב" -> "I hungry" (leaving out the "am" English speakers would put it there), etc.
  - TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
    That's just a zero copula language. Nothing weird about that. The concept is still present in the language.
tromp 3y ago
The Dutch use "blij" (short-term) and "gelukkig" (long-term).
a_c 3y ago
Language determines how one thinks. People from different cultures count differently for example, and that affect how people do math. "two-dozen is two times a dozen" is more intuitive than "twenty four is two times twelve". To me twenty four and twelve are just two words, but two-dozen is clearly double twelve. Another example is the words brothers and sisters, where being older and younger less emphasized. In many asian cultures, where age is considered a prestige (or is it not?), there is a clear distinction between older and younger children.
- TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
  > Language determines how one thinks. This is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (though it's mostly Whorf's), and it's been largely debunked. Language may have some limited influence of perception of colours and innate direction, but probably not much more than that.

GuardianCaveman 3y ago

Yet other times the lack of that word denotes a different perspective on that subject. Short term or long term happiness isn’t differentiated in the untied states. I don’t think of happiness in terms of long or short term. Just as a temporary state that hopefully last a long time. Think of all the words we use to express love in English. In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love.

xyzelement 3y ago
Interesting point about English. You're right, having a single word for "I am happy the light turned green just as I approached the intersection" and "I have 10 children and I am proud of the kind of people they turned out to be" really blunts the nuance. In my parlance, I'd call the second thing "meaningful" but not everyone strives for meaning (or think it matters) so it kinda doesn't have the same mindshare as the "by-default-short-term" happy.
cjohnson318 3y ago
Y'all are saying that because Americans don't have a single term for "long term happiness" and a separate term for "short term happiness," then that creates some kind of blindspot for Americans. We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. > In Chinese a word technically exists for love but it’s not used between people more for things but even then it’s not the same word. This is a perfect example of the characteristics of a language representing a change of perception on something as powerful as expressing love. This sounds like a cultural norm around language use. There's examples of this in English. You might say, "I love lamp." That's weird, it's a non-standard use for the word "love," but people would give you the benefit of the doubt and note that you "like" the lamp.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Groxx 3y ago
  Chinese is a particularly bad example since as a language it builds concepts out of multiple smaller terms far more explicitly than English.
- Juliate 3y ago
  > We understand how to put multiple terms together to express nuanced ideas. That's not the same as having a single word that embodies a specific concept, that helps/shorten the expression/sharing of it. If you don't have this single concept that stands for itself, and/or that you don't know the word, as long as you can't name it, it's hard if not impossible to see it. That's why we give a name to things or people we find/meet. See shades of white (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shades_of_white), plural forms, different depending on the language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_grammatical_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural#Use_in_systems_of_gramm...), love (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love) if only in Greek where it has at least 6 very distinct ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love). But, also, that knack for ambiguity and second and third order meaning in apparently detached sentences in some languages, it has its own charms.
pipodeclown 3y ago
Yet you do think of some people as a happy or jolly people and others as gloomy. This is the difference that is denoted here where your trying to describe a more general long term state of mind of a person.

watwut 3y ago

OMG this.

halflife 3y ago

Actually, ״to be״ in Hebrew translates to להיות (l’hyot), depending on the context. “I want to be at home” “אני רוצה להיות בבית״

WJW 3y ago
Sure, but in most cases its conjugations are just left out entirely, as in "קר לי"; literally "cold to me" (I am cold). "אני רעב" -> "I hungry" (leaving out the "am" English speakers would put it there), etc.
- TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
  That's just a zero copula language. Nothing weird about that. The concept is still present in the language.

tromp 3y ago

The Dutch use "blij" (short-term) and "gelukkig" (long-term).

a_c 3y ago

Language determines how one thinks. People from different cultures count differently for example, and that affect how people do math. "two-dozen is two times a dozen" is more intuitive than "twenty four is two times twelve". To me twenty four and twelve are just two words, but two-dozen is clearly double twelve. Another example is the words brothers and sisters, where being older and younger less emphasized. In many asian cultures, where age is considered a prestige (or is it not?), there is a clear distinction between older and younger children.

TRiG_Ireland 3y ago
> Language determines how one thinks. This is called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (though it's mostly Whorf's), and it's been largely debunked. Language may have some limited influence of perception of colours and innate direction, but probably not much more than that.