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It is official! Cheep News has now been launched! And to start it off, I'd like to share with you a topic most, if not, everyone can relate to. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever experienced a feeling or an emotion that you just can't describe or find the word that effectively depicts the true sense of what you're feeling? Well thanks to the Goddess Hen that gifted the Earth with my almighty, glorified presence, I am able to shed some light in hopes to deepen your understanding of what you're perceiving!

 

Don't leave yet, I'm aware that the news section hasn't been receiving overwhelming traffic mainly because there haven't been many topics that people can relate to or comment on. I'm here to hopefully change that!

 

Now on to the news :

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Have you ever felt a little mbuki-mvuki – the irresistible urge to “shuck off your clothes as you dance”? Perhaps a little kilig – the jittery fluttering feeling as you talk to someone you fancy? How about uitwaaien – which encapsulates the revitalising effects of taking a walk in the wind?

 

These words – taken from Bantu, Tagalog, and Dutch – have no direct English equivalent, but they represent very precise emotional experiences that are neglected in our language. And if Tim Lomas at the University of East London has his way, they might soon become much more familiar.

 

Lomas’s Postive Lexicography Project aims to capture the many flavours of good feelings (some of which are distinctly bittersweet) found across the world, in the hope that we might start to incorporate them all into our daily lives. We have already borrowed many emotion words from other languages, after all – think “frisson”, from French, or “schadenfreude”, from German – but there are many more that have not yet wormed their way into our vocabulary. Lomas has found hundreds of these "untranslatable" experiences so far – and he’s only just begun.

 

Learning these words, he hopes, will offer us all a richer and more nuanced understanding of ourselves. “They offer a very different way of seeing the world.”

 

Lomas says he was first inspired after hearing a talk on the Finnish concept of sisu, which is a sort of “extraordinary determination in the face of adversity”. According to Finnish speakers, the English ideas of “grit”, “perseverance” or “resilience” do not come close to describing the inner strength encapsulated in their native term. It was "untranslatable" in the sense that there was no direct or easy equivalent encoded within the English vocabulary that could capture that deep resonance.

 

Many of the terms referred to highly specific positive feelings, which often depend on very particular circumstances:

Desbundar (Portuguese) – to shed one’s inhibitions in having fun

Tarab (Arabic) – a musically induced state of ecstasy or enchantment

Shinrin-yoku (Japanese) – the relaxation gained from bathing in the forest, figuratively or literally

Gigil (Tagalog) – the irresistible urge to pinch or squeeze someone because they are loved or cherished

Yuan bei (Chinese) – a sense of complete and perfect accomplishment

Iktsuarpok (Inuit) – the anticipation one feels when waiting for someone, whereby one keeps going outside to check if they have arrived

But others represented and offered a more complex experience which could be crucial to our growth and overall flourishing

Natsukashii (Japanese) – a nostalgic longing for the past, with happiness for the fond memory, yet sadness that it is no longer

Wabi-sabi (Japanese) – a “dark, desolate sublimity” centred on transience and imperfection in beauty

Saudade (Portuguese) – a melancholic longing or nostalgia for a person, place or thing that is far away either spatially or in time – a vague, dreaming wistfulness for phenomena that may not even exist

Sehnsucht (German) – “life-longings”, an intense desire for alternative states and realisations of life, even if they are unattainable

In addition to these emotions, Lomas’s lexicography also charted the personal characteristics and behaviours that might determine our long-term well-being and the ways we interact with other people.

Dadirri (Australian aboriginal) term – a deep, spiritual act of reflective and respectful listening

Pihentagyú (Hungarian) – literally meaning “with a relaxed brain”, it describes quick-witted people who can come up with sophisticated jokes or solutions

Desenrascanço (Portuguese) – to artfully disentangle oneself from a troublesome situation

Sukha (Sanskrit) – genuine lasting happiness independent of circumstances

Orenda (Huron) – the power of the human will to change the world in the face of powerful forces such as fate

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Now tell me, what are you feeling?

To view the original article, click here : http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170126-the-untranslatable-emotions-you-never-knew-you-had

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