The meaning of 'love' depends on the language
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There is an anecdote that when the words 'Love' in English and 'amour' in French were introduced to Japan, various attempts were made to translate it as a concept never before seen in Japanese. A linguist was asked by the world 2474 to investigate whether there are emotions that cannot be expressed linguistically in some cultures and ask, 'Is human emotions universal or formed by culture?' We surveyed the vocabulary of the language.
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure | Science
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6472/1517
Emotional Words Such as 'Love' Mean Different Things in Different Languages-Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/emotional-words-such-as-love-mean-different-things-in-different-languages/
In German, `` Weltschmerz '' means feeling depressed by the state of the world, and in Papua New Guinean `` Awumbuk '' means that a guest remains lazy after leaving the next day across the country. Some languages that vary from culture to culture do not translate well into other languages.
Scientists studying the origin of these words have long debated whether there is a universal source of human emotions. An earlier study showed that people living in an isolated culture in Papua New Guinea showed Westerners their faces and read emotions from facial expressions, and as a result, `` even people living in different parts of the world understand emotions in the same way. '' I concluded. However, subsequent studies from various aspects, such as psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology, have shown evidence that emotions are greatly influenced by cultural background.
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The problem with these studies is that many studies are limited to comparisons between the two countries, and that the comparison is focused on industrialized countries, says a postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Joshua Jackson points out. So Jackson and his colleague Kristen Lindkist worked with scientists at the Max Planck Institute to launch a study in languages around the world.
Researchers conducted a survey of vocabulary in 2474 languages and found that 'variability of words expressing emotions' and 'some commonalities' were found. Until now, researchers have been trying to determine whether emotions are universal or fluctuating, but both sides have been discovered.
To investigate the variability of emotional expression, researchers first created a 'large database of words with multiple meanings' on a computer. For example, the Russian word 'ruka' has two meanings, 'arm' and 'hand', and the English word 'funny' has two meanings, 'strange' and 'humorous'. A vocabulary database like this was created.
The team then used the database to create a network of words with two meanings from 20 language families and compare vocabularies related to emotions. This has revealed a striking difference in how emotions are conceptualized by culture. For example, 'surprise' was classified as 'fear' in one language, while 'surprise' was classified as 'joy' in another. A closer analysis showed that some of this diversity was explained by the geographical relationships of the language families, and that cultures that were close in location tended to have similarities in language. 'Such cultures have historically been easy to connect with, such as trade, immigration, and conquest, and have conveyed the concept of emotion to one another,' said the researchers.
by gpointstudio
Researchers also found a similarity that `` Every language family differentiates emotions based on valence (how pleasant or unpleasant) and activity (how much excitement is induced) '' Did. For this reason, words expressing joy are not basically grouped with words expressing regret. However, as an exception, Austronesian languages, including Japanese, sometimes classify `` love '', which should be basically a positive word, into the same group as negative words such as `` sympathy '' is.
'This is a very important study. It's probably the first time that the meaning of words has been analyzed on such a scale,' commented William Croft, a linguist at the University of New Mexico. On the other hand, it also points out that some language families use other languages in a wide geographic area, so that further investigation of cultural factors is important.
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