• Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    9 days ago

    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.’

    • MrQuallzin@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      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!)

      • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        8 days ago

        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.