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We are not our emotions
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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| English | French | Literal French | Spanish | Literal Spanish | Japanese | (Sorta) Literal Japanese | |
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| | I'm hungry | J'ai faim | I have hunger | Tengo hambre O Estoy hambriento/a | I have hunger OR I am (temporarily) hungry | Onaka ga suita | Regarding stomach: empty | | I'm angry | Je suis fâché | I am angry | Estoy enojado/a | I am (temporarily) angry | Watashi wa okotte imasu | Regarding me: angry is | | I'm cold | J'ai froid | I have cold | Tengo frio | I have cold | Samui OR Samuidesu | Cold OR It's cold | | I'm scared | J'ai peur | I have fear | Estoy asustado/a | I am (temporarily) scared | Kowai OR Watashi wa kowaidesu | Scary OR Regarding me: scared/scary is | | I'm brave | Je suis courageux | I'm brave (courageous) | Soy valiente | I am (permanently) brave | Watashi wa yūkan'na | Regarding me: brave |
Languages are fun. French switches between "I have" and "I am" for these sorts of things. Spanish mostly uses "I am" but it has two versions of "I am", one that's used generally for more permanent states of things, one that's used for more temporary states. As a result, "I'm scared but I'm brave" uses one for the temporary condition of being scared, but one for the more permanent condition of being brave.
Japanese has its own whole system that is so different from English that it's hard to directly translate. In japanese "wa" marks the topic of a sentence, and can often be omitted if it's obvious. So you could just say "cold" or "brave" if it's obvious you're talking about yourself, or you can say "Watashi wa" which sort-of translates as "regarding me" or "about me". The particle "wa" is something used in Japanese to mark the topic of a sentence. Japanese doesn't have verb-person agreement, so there's no "I am", "you are", "he is". There's instead something vaguely like "regarding me: is" If you wanted to tell someone they were brave you'd change the topic of the sentence to them and say "Anata wa yūkan'na".
Japanese also uses the same word for "scary" and "scared" so you need contextual clues or other words to differentiate between "I am scared" vs. "I am scary". There's a different Japanese particle "ga" that is similar but has a narrower focus. Instead of the whole sentence being about something, it's just the previous word. So, I'm hungry becomes "my stomach is empty" but more literally: "specifically regarding stomach: empty".
None of this really makes any logical sense. Languages are weird, and the things that are the most commonly said are the weirdest. What does "I am hungry" really mean, that I am the very definition of hunger? That whole condition changes when you eat a sandwich? What does "I have fear" mean? I have it in a basket? Does "I feel fear" mean that I can sense its texture with my fingers? In English we mostly "are" things like hunger or fear. But, for some reason it's "I have a feeling" Now it's like the other European languages where feelings are something you have, not something you are.
This guy languages.
Personally, I wouldn't use "regarding" for "ga" as you did. I think that's more for "wa."
Yeah, I don't know of a better way of indicating "ga", if you do let me know and I'll update it.
How about German? Being the other main language behind the drunk hodgepodge that is English, it's worth looking into that
German also mixes it a fair bit. Following merc's table in order:
#4 uses haben (to have) + noun; #2 and #5 use sein (to be) + adjective.
For #1 you'll typically see the noun + haben. Adjective + sein is perfectly viable, but a bit less common, and I feel like it leans towards metaphoric usage; e.g. «ich bin hungrig nach Liebe», literally "I'm hungry for love".
#3 uses the dative instead, it's roughly "it's cold for me". If you use "ich bin kalt", you'll convey that your temperature is low, not that you're feeling cold.
That's inaccurate.
To keep it short, the situation between English, Dutch and German is a lot like the situation between Romance languages: they have a common origin (West Germanic), one isn't from the other. And while English got bits and bobs of vocab due to Norse and Norman influence, vocab is rather superficial, and most oddities of the language were born in the islands.
This table is a good example. English is basically adjectivising almost everything physiological and emotional, while both German and the Romance languages would use a mix of adjectives and nouns instead. (With the Romance languages typically preferring nouns, but that isn't a hard rule.)
Do you know German? The "I am cold" one is interesting to me. "Mir" is German for "me" or "to me" roughly, right? So, would a rough literal translation be something like "to me it is cold"?
I tried to learn some German at some point, but I didn't manage to learn enough to get comfortable with the various cases.
I'm pretty sure it's called the dative experiencer, and many other languages also do something similar (sometimes using prepositions in absence of case, but the point being that the same grammar used to denote the indirect object of verbs like "give" is also used here)
I know some German but I'm not proficient with it.
It's easier to analyse the sentence by including the subject, typically omitted: "es ist mir kalt" = "it is me cold", or "it's cold to me". It's a lot like saying "that's blue to me", you know? Like, it isn't like you are cold or blue, it's something else, but you're experiencing it. (It's a dative of relation, in both languages.)
Roughly, yes. But that gets messy, there's no good equivalent.
Think on it this way: you have a bunch of situations where you'd use the first person, right? English arbitrarily splits those situations between "me" and "I"; German does it between "ich", "mich", and "mir".
That German dative is used in situations like:
I got to thank Latin for that - by the time I started studying German, the cases felt intuitive.
But... really, when you're dealing with Indo-European languages, you're going to experience at least some grammatical hell: adpositions (English), cases (Latin), a mix of both (German), but never "neither".
Speaking on Latin, it just clicked me it does something else than the languages you listed - those states/emotions get handled primarily by the verb:
That's really interesting, thanks for the detailed answer. I never learned Latin. Instead I learned French and Spanish. So, I only know the descendants of Latin.
Also cool how Latin has a verb for "to be angry", etc. English has "to anger" but that's to make someone else angry. I wonder why languages lost that form, because it seems really useful to have a single verb for those.
I am not sure, but I think it's due to the changes in the passive. Latin had proper passive forms for plenty verbs, and a lot of those verbs handling states were either deponent (passive-looking with active meaning; like irascor) or relied on the passive for the state (like terreo "I terrify" → terreor "I'm terrified"). Somewhere down the road the Romance languages ditched it for the sake of the analytical passive, sum + participle.
I'm saying this because, while irascor died, the participle survived in e.g. Portuguese (Lat. iratum → Por. irado, "angered"). And it got even re-attached to a new verb (irar "to cause anger").
Yeah, I ran out of columns. I looked at it and it's somewhere between English and one of the Romance languages.
I'm scared but I'm brave is "Ich habe Angst, aber ich bin mutig" -> I have fear but I am brave