Fundamental misunderstanding of English.
“I am sad” – am here is a copula. It indicates a link between the subject (I) and subject-complement (sad). In this case, it’s saying “subject (I) has property (sad).” It does not equate the subject and subject-complement.
Not all languages work like this. In Mandarin for instance, 我是伤心* (wǒ (I) shì (am) shāngxīn (sad)*) would be seen as grammatically incorrect or at least weird. This would literally mean “I am sad” (adjectives in Mandarin operate as stative verbs, so the correct way to say this is without a copula – i.e. 我很伤心 (wǒ (I) hěn (quite/very) shāngxīn (sad)). (You could drop the 很 (quite), and just say 我伤心, but the connotation in this case is that you’re setting up for a juxtaposition, e.g. “I’m sad, you’re not sad.”))
So, like an enema ?
This is quite romantic, and I agree that we should be aware of our emotions as temporary, as clouds in the sky. However, the Irish language has not prevented the Irish people from having some of the highest rates of anxiety on Earth https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/anxiety-disorders-prevalence
This is one of those things where it’s not that deep.
Actually language plays a big part in our mental state, language processing is shown to play a huge role in the development and perception of our emotional states.
I’m aware.
People underestimate our ability to compensate for shortcomings of language. At the end of the day, you have to choose a way to say it.
Does “This car is fast” mean the car is the abstract concept of having higher velocity? Does it mean the car is permanently moving fast or it has not and will not stop?
absolutely.
yes it means that.
“I am sad” doesn’t at all mean that sadness is my defining characteristic. It usually means sadness is a temporary state.
Non-linguists trying themselves at linguistics always often come up with pseudo facts like this.
I mostly agree with you, but I do find it interesting how some languages and therefore cultures account for things like this. I saw a Sunn M’Cheaux video about it and it was super interesting!
You obviously know nothing about language. When I say “I’m here”, what I am saying is that I now and forever identify as the grocery store parking lot we decided to meet at. And when I say “I’m running”, I am saying that I have become the very concept of speed.
I. Am. Speed.
For normal people yes, for people who lack emotional regulation, “I am sad” can be an identity because you might get stuck in it for years at a time. Decades.
I think the author here is speaking to those people more than just your average joe who could care less about the distinction between state and characteristic because they understand the difference already.
It would be more correct to say “I feel sad”, but colloquially “I am sad” is used for the same thing.
Translating, conjugating and undestanding “To Be” is always fraught with peril. :)
English French Literal French Spanish Literal Spanish Japanese (Sorta) Literal Japanese 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.
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.
This guy languages.
How about German? Being the other main language behind the drunk hodgepodge that is English, it’s worth looking into that
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
German also mixes it a fair bit. Following merc’s table in order:
- hungry - ich habe Hunger / ich bin hungrig
- angry - ich bin böse / ich bin wütend
- cold - mir ist kalt
- scared - ich habe Angst
- brave - ich bin mutig
#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.
Being the other main language behind the drunk hodgepodge that is English
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 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.)
“Mir” is German for “me” or “to me” roughly, right?
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:
- if a verb demands two objects, one gets the dative; e.g. “er gibt mir das Buch” (he gives me the book).
- if the preposition demands it; e.g. “er spricht mit mir” = “he speaks with me”
- if you got a dative of relation (like the above), or benefaction (something done for another person), etc.
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 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:
- hungry - esurio (verb, “I’m hungry”)
- angry - irascor (verb, “I’m angry”)
- cold - frigeo (verb, “I’m chilly/cold”)
- scared - timeo (verb, “I fear/have fear”)
- brave - fortis (adjective, “strong”); animosus (adjective, roughly “adamant”, “stubborn”, “angry”)
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.
We need an “iam14andthisisdeep” on Lemmy.
I’m unfortunately closer to “iam40andthisisdeep”
Stay wholesome please
I’ve seen a recent uptick in deepish thoughts. This is a prime example of that.
But, hey, if it gets you through…
Spanish is somewhat similar. Scared isn’t something you are, it’s something you have (tengo miedo, lit. ‘I have fear’). Emotions are also ‘put on you’ instead of making you a certain way. Ex: me puso feliz translates as ‘it made me happy,’ but literally is ‘it put happiness on me.’
Also, Spanish has two main verbs for “to be”. There’s “ser”, which is used for things that are inherent (e.g.: “Yo soy de Mexico” means “I am from Mexico”). But then there’s also “estar”, which is used for the current state of things, or a temporary status (e.g.: “Yo estoy enfermo” means “I am sick (in my current state)”).
“ser” is a cognate of “essence”, “estar” of “state” :D
This little nugget would have come in handy when I was learning Spanish
Ahh. I knew about “estar” but I never knew that about “ser”. Very good to know!
And then locations and buildings come to fuck up that way of remembering it, because la biblioteca está allí, not la biblioteca es allí. 😩
Did you know that Spanish speaking kids don’t do spelling bees, they do grammar competitions? Not hard to see why, haha!
The library is a thing, not a person. That’s why you say está, because there’s nothing inherent about a library, it’s just an outer description. In general location descriptions are described with está, no ser.
Estoy triste: I am sad right now Soy triste: I am a sad person, in general.
La biblioteca está genial: the library is awesome right now (maybe due to an event or special decoration or because it was recently cleaned).
La biblioteca es genial: the library is awesome in general.Tengo hambre: I am hungry
Soy hambre: I am hunger/(a hungry person)And then locations and buildings come to fuck up that way of remembering it, because la biblioteca está allí, not la biblioteca es allí.
True that. I guess maybe it’s because a building’s location isn’t necessarily part of its essence. Or how it feels more natural with respect to a person, e.g.: “yo estoy en la biblioteca” makes sense cause a person moves from place to place. I guess technically buildings can be moved but it’s still a bit confusing.
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German (if I’m remembering right from my high school language class days), does the same thing as well. It’s not ‘I am hungry’, it’s ‘I have hunger’.
(If there’s any actual German readers/speakers and I misspoke, I apologize. This was almost 15 years ago at this point!)
Native speaker of German here: Both “ich bin hungrig” (I am hungry) and “ich habe Hunger” (I have hunger) are valid German. The latter is more common though, the adjective “hungrig” is more often used as an attributive adjective.
Yes but it is “I am sad”
…no? In the literal examples given in the post, they would be translated as english
I’m sad: estoy triste I’m anxious: estoy ansioso/a
That’s why I said somewhat similar and gave different examples than the ones in the OP. The non-literal language involved in talking about emotions being different between language groups in some situations was interesting to me.
I believe this is just about which word a language uses to say that an adjective applies to a noun. While ‘to be’ is very popular for this, ‘to have’ is quite common too. Mandarin uses ‘very’.
It’s a bit deeper - in Spanish and other Romance languages, emotions and physiological states are typically conveyed by a noun, not by an adjective*. Like in Catoblepas’ example “tengo miedo”, it’s literally “I have fear”; miedo is a noun. You could use one of the two copulas by forcing an adjective, but it’ll change the meaning:
- soy miedoso - you’re a scaredy-cat, you’re often afraid
- estoy miedoso - I’m not a native speaker** so my intuition might be wrong, but it sounds like you’re going through hard times and you’re currently afraid of random stuff.
*there are exceptions, like “feliz” (happy; adjective).
**my native language does something similar, but the verbs don’t match well.
*miedoso/a
Idk what medroso is but isn’t Spanish.
Fixed - thanks for pointing it out. (Portuguese.)
lol no? we say “i am sad”, not “i am sadness”. that’d be weird.
Yeah we have that in English, too. We use the word “feel”. 🙄
The things English does with the word “feel” should be illegal.
You don’t get to use the same word for having profound internal emotions AND to rub your grubby hands on things. That’s just not right.
Well I might feel if you put your grubby hands on my things
French is even weirder with “sentir”.
For feelings, french usually uses a reflexive form: “je me sens triste” (I feel sad). That’s the easy part.
Now the real fun is that you can say stuff like “je sens tes pieds”, and it could mean “I can feel (touch) your feet” or “I can smell your feet”, or even both at the same time.
So do other romance languages. In Spanish the “siento” word has a very similar meaning and is used very similarly. It applies to both of your examples.
I feel like there’s no issue with the use :)
You can’t use “sentir” for touching things. I mean, you can try, but you’d sound like a creep. Come to think of it, Spanish doesn’t really have a word for perceiving things by touch. They just say… well, touch. They have a specific different thing to reference feeling around (a tientas).
It can technically mean “hear” in it and a few other romance languages, though. Not as weird, I’d argue.
“esta superficie se siente rugosa”.
That’s a completely valid sentence, you can and do use sentir. However I think I understood what you meant, you meant that english uses feel as a verb to describe the action of touching things, not to describe how things feel to the touch. Gotcha.
A tientas is used as a descriptor when you are trying to feel something without light, yeah.
Also, I’m from Spain, you really don’t need to lecture me on how we talk 😅.
I mean, that’s a bit of an anglicism, though? It’s not strictly incorrect, maybe, and you’ll hear it in some dialects, but it sounds weird. For one thing it’s more ambiguous. It sounds like you’re saying the surface itself is feeling a bit rough today. I’d go a looong way out of my way to not say it that way. “Es rugosa al tacto” sounds more natural.
But yeah, in English feeling is specifically the verb used to express that you’re touching something or perceiving something by touch. In romance languages it tends to default to hearing before it does touch.
sapir-whorf, annoyingly, strikes again
How do I get the sadness and anxiety offa me?!
have you tried, like, not being sad?
Even beyond just emotions, in Portuguese the “be” verb can be translated into two different verbs: “ser” and “estar”. They are two complete separate things - so separate that English classes kinda turned the “to be” verb into a meme due to how long it takes to teach Portuguese speakers to use it and understand what it means in each sentence.
“Ser”: to be someone who is something. Usually more permanent, but not necessarily.
“Estar”: to be in the state of something. Usually more temporary, but also applies to permanent states.
Some examples showing how the meaning of some expressions change depending on which verb you use:
You are sick “Ser”: you are a sick (twisted/evil) person. “Estar”: you have caught some sickness.
You are sad “Ser”: life has made you sad in general. “Estar”: you’re feeling sad right now.
You are beautiful: “Ser”: you are a beautiful person. “Estar”: you are looking great today.
You’re good at this: “Ser”: literal, you’re good at this. “Estar”: implies being good is not the default but you have reached the point of being good at this.
**you’re funny drunk": “Ser”: when you’re drunk you are funny. “Estar”: you are drunk now and this time you turned out to be funny while drunk. Or, in this point of your life you’re funny when you’re drunk.
it’s cold there: “Ser”: that is a cold place. “Estar”: that place is cold right now.
it’s cold there now “Ser”: it’s like saying that winters in that place used to be mild but nowadays winter there can get pretty cold “Estar”: that place is cold right now.
Little trick, anything that you would use “estar” in romance languages aka Portuguese, use “feel” instead of “be”, it’s just as valid and there’s less misunderstandings.
Also, for your examples, you would never interpret “you are sad” as ser, since ser describes adjectives, it’s always estar. Your ser version would be “you are a sad person” aka “eres un triste” (in Spanish).
See, you start reading too much into grammar this way and then you learn about how Spanish uses their “to be” equivalent and have a massive existential crisis.
I’d like to tell people “soy aquí” is perfectly grammatical and means you’re identifying with a place like “I’m the Earth”. It could be figurative language or science fiction.
“Soy aqui” reminds me a certain movie scene:
–El senado decidirá tu destino.
–YO SOY EL SENADO.Bad idea to confuse it with “estoy cenado”, otherwise you might get Jedi trying to murder you for having dinner.
