English doesn't have enough words for Love

If we can't describe feelings, do we still feel them? How do we deal with them?

Sanskrit has 96 words for love. Greek has 8. English has only 1. I've been thinking about something anthropologist Robert Levy discovered in 1973- Tahitians didn’t have a word to describe grief. When they lost someone close to them, they’d say they felt ‘sick’ or ‘strange’. But they couldn’t conceptualize grieving. Or the Berlin-Kaye color sequence, and how the word for blue often comes very late in the development of a language, and how before it does, speakers of those languages would have only conceptualized different shades of green. And I think about how English seems to be a…

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• English doesn't have enough words for Lovesarv.substack.com
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• The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows | Words for Deep Emotionsthedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com
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• On the poverty of namesstanforddaily.com
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• J.D. McClatchy on the Contrast and Complementarity of Desire and Love – The Marginalianthemarginalian.org
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• my love language is not having to ask.substack.com