While investigating non - English words associated with positive emotions and concepts , a British research worker recently strike 216 foreign words for which there is no English translation .
There ’s an ongoing disputation among scientist about speech communication and its association to conscious experience . Philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett hassaidthat lyric “ taint and modulate our thought at every degree , ” arguing that a substantial portion of our perception of the world is influence by the row at our administration . Many psychologists , on the other hand , have a grueling sentence believing that humans are n’t equal to of grasping a concept or find an emotion just because there ’s no give-and-take for it . But as University of East London psychologist Tim Lomas points out in his new study , enlarge vocabularies have the potential to “ enrich [ our ] experiences of well - being . ”
Over the course of hisresearch , now published in The Journal of Positive Psychology , Lomas managed to uncover an astounding 216 psychologically irrefutable “ untranslatable words”—words that have no English eq . Lomas did this because he want to see how other cultures verbalize incontrovertible emotional concepts , and more determinedly , he ’s hop these words will enrich the aroused well - being of English speakers .
Lomas organized the wrangle into three categories . Here are some examples :
Words relating to feelings :
Gula : Spanish for the desire to eat plainly for the predilection
Sobremesa : Spanish for when the food has stop but the conversation is still flux
Mbukimvuki : Bantu for “ to shuck of one ’s clothes to dance ”
Schnapsidee : German for coming up with an clever plan when drunk
Volta : Greek for leisurely strolling the streets
word relating to relationship :
Nakama : Japanese for friends who one considers like family
Kanyininpa : Aboriginal Pintupi for a relationship between bearer and held , akin to the deep nurturing feelings experienced by a parent for their child
Gigil : Philippine Tagalog for the resistless urge to pinch or embrace someone because you fuck them so much
Kilig : Tagalog for the butterfly in the tum you get when interacting with someone you find attractive
Sarang : Korean for when you wish to be with someone until death
Good Book relating to lineament :
Sitzfleisch : German for the ability to hold on through hard or dull tasks ( literally “ sit center ” )
Baraka : Arabic for a gift of ghostly energy that can be eliminate from one mortal to another
Jugaad : Hindi for the ability to get by or make do
Desenrascanco : Lusitanian for the ability to artfully disentangle oneself from a troublesome situation
Sprezzatura : Italian for when all prowess and exertion are hold back beneath a “ studied sloppiness ”
you may findmany more examplesat BPS Digest . Lomas admits that his 216 Holy Writ are just a drop in the bucket ; he ’s still updating his leaning , which is usable online , and is welcoming suggestions from the populace .
Of of course , a good companion study to this one would be a compilation of minus words with no English transformation . That mode we ’d truly know if English is as psychoneurotic a language as it looks like .
[ The Journal of Positive PsychologyviaBPS Research Digest ]
Top image : Bojack Horseman
PsychologyScience
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