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    I’m sorry

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    23 Comments

    2. Such_Significance905 on

      Thanks for sharing. It’s such a lovely phrase.

      Perhaps of interest, a lot of linguists think that this way of talking about emotions or feelings as entirely separate in some languages is related to the origin of how we think, and that we had a “bicameral mind” that was genuinely in two parts up until around 2000 years ago.

    3. An_Bo_Mhara on

      I’m Irish and everyone knows we don’t actually have feelings. 

      We are always “grand”

    6. Veronese1 on

      Our ‘feeling’ come out after too much drink, a punch-up, then tears and reconciliation with the recipient of said punches.

    7. amakalamm on

      So you are saying there was a sadness on me when I was being brutalized by all those sadistic Irish teachers when I was at school?

    13. metalslime_tsarina on

      I really don’t like this airy fairy breakdown that gets shared so often

    14. wh0else on

      This is a quote from Pádraig Ó Tuama’s lovely podcast, _Poetry Unbound_ which is excellent. He introduces and reads a modern poem by permission of the author, then discusses context and layers of meaning, then reads it again so you can listen with that new context. It’s very well done.

    16. GroltonIsTheDog on

      This kind of linguistic semantics breakdown is always absolute toss.

    17. Fluffy_Anything_3559 on

      Or maybe the grammar of Celtic languages just evolved differently from that of Germanic languages. Irish is a modern language spoken by normal people, not a secret mystical fairytale tongue.

    19. GtotheBizzle on

      Another one I like is “I’m very tired” is translated to “tá tuirseach an domhain orm” which, if translated literally, means “the tiredness of the world is upon me”.

      Also, a ladybird in Irish is “bóín dé” which, literally, means “gods little cow”. Apparently that last translation is the same in Russian.

    20. Rich_Ad8038 on

      Arguably, this could also mean that emotions are passively happening to a person, and you don’t have any agency or need to engage with them. Also, in colloquial English in some parts of the country, people use ‘you’ instead of ‘I’, distancing themselves from the feeling itself, for example ‘you’d be sad to see it’ rather than ‘I am sad to see it’. It’s just a thought given Irish people’s tendency to be quite emotionally restrained.

    22. Gorazde on

      It’s a pretty meaningless distinction, to be honest. Emotions are ephemeral by definition. If I say I’m sad, no one assumes that’s a permanent condition.

    23. Craicriture on

      A few languages use structures similarly. Spanish for example would say Estoy triste, not soy triste which would mean I’m a sad person rather than just sad emotionally at the moment. It distinguishes permanent characteristics vs temporary states. English isn’t that subtle.