Enrich Your Emotional Vocabulary With These Precise Terms From Around the World
There are other words to describe how you feel besides sadness, anger and joy – in fact, there is a whole world of words that can describe your emotions in incredibly concrete ways.
The Positive Lexicography Project by Dr. Tim Lomas of the University of East London is an index of untranslatable words that refer to various states of well-being from languages around the world. It includes words such as:
- Charmolipi (χαρμολύπη) (Greek) : Sweet or “joyful” sadness; funeral joy; happiness and sadness mingled.
- Resfeber ( Swedish ) : travel fever / bug; the feeling of excitement and nervousness that a traveler experiences before going on a trip.
- Xīn ku (辛苦) ( Chinese ) : Recognition and recognition of others and their efforts.
- He (Japanese) : A sense of moral duty associated with a favor or blessing given by others.
- Waldeinsamkeit (German) : forest seclusion; a strange feeling of loneliness or loneliness in the forest.
I don’t know about you, but I definitely felt or thought about all of this before. Andthere are many more things to look at and learn . According to BBC Future , Lomas was inspired to start this project after he heard about the Finnish term “sisu”, which roughly translates to “extraordinary determination in the face of adversity” (Finns consider this word much more than English words. For example, “persistence” or “resilience”). So he started looking for more examples of non-English words describing very specific emotions and then published his findings in the Journal of Positive Psychology .
Lomas hopes that his research and development of the vocabulary of untranslatable words for certain emotions will help people see the world a little differently. You can even start to understand yourself better and find out what really makes you feel good about yourself. You can familiarize yourself with all the vocabulary at the link below.
Project “Positive Lexicography” | Dr. Tim Lomas