Hi Bo, Platt, all interested
BO:
> An aside. In English the term "feel/feeling" means sensing
> as well as feeling. Exactly the same in Norwegian (föle/fölelse)
> and Swedish (kjenne/kjensle); German (fühlen/gefühl), while
> French (according to Denis) "Sentir/Resentir". That is as far as
> my knowledge goes. Marco! Italian? Wim! Dutch? Jonathan!
> Hebrew? Rasheed! Arabic? And if other languages present,
> please.
Short answer.
In Italian: sentire/sentimento.
Long answer.
Bo, you give me the chance to have fun with etymology. Thanks. And also, I
want to take this occasion to look at this problem of emotions... isn't it
time to close it?
We have not the exact matching term of "Feel" in Italian. (that is, correct
me if I'm wrong, basically the "sense of touch" in English...). As well as
French, we borrow from Latin the term "Sensus" and its derivations. So we
have "Sentire" as verb. In English it can be translated both with To sense
and To feel. "Sentire" is valid for emotions, as well.
** [ An interesting thing is that "sentire" is here valid for all
senses -even for the so called "sixth sense" - but sight. More or less the
same seems to be valid for the English "To Feel". We can't "sentire" by
means of eyes: this is a clear Indo-European heritage, as they used to give
to the sense of sight a special role of prominence above the other senses.
Just think of Plato's *Ideas*. (I've read about "Hearing" having OTOH this
special role among semitic populations: think of "The Verb". Jonathan,
nothing to say?) ]
That is about the verb. Then we have three different nouns: "senso" that is
more used as biological "sense", as "meaning", and as "direction" (not
strange, as actually what has no sense doesn't lead anywhere); "sensazione"
that is more about the "sixth sense", a sort of inner intuition. And
"sentimento" that is more used about feelings and emotions. All that is to
say that our language uses the same etym to mean the five biological senses
plus the sixth, plus emotions....
Then we have also the term "emozione" (emotion) that is a synonimous of
"sentimento". Even emotion is derived by Latin, and it's a bit strange to
have two diverse terms derived from the same language meaning the same
concept. Ex-movere means "to stir", so even if sentimento/feeling and
emozione/emotion are quite interchangeable, it would be probably a bit more
etymologically correct to use the former to mean what happens inside, and
the latter about our way of showing and inevitably, yes, sharing our
feelings. In this sense (!) maybe we can well say that "emotion" more than
"feeling" point ALSO to the social side of the process.
A process that, I repeat, has anyway a biological root.
Ciao,
Marco
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