It is becoming abundantly clear that not only is it impossible for people of different cultures to successfully live together, it is not possible to correctly understand cross-cultural communication even when both sides think they are speaking the same language:
Many languages have words whose meanings seem so specific and nuanced that there’s no way to translate them; they can only be imported wholesale. Consider the German “schadenfreude,” the pleasure derived from another’s misfortune, or “sehnsucht,” a sort of deep yearning for an alternative life.
Those kinds of emotion words often feel rooted in the culture from which they emerged, said Asifa Majid, a cognitive scientist at the University of York in England. She pointed to the feeling of “awumbuk,” which Baining people in Papua Guinea experience when their guests depart after an overnight stay. It leaves people listless, she wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study, something akin to a “social hangover.”
Yet many languages also have words that English speakers might think of as “basic” emotions — love, hate, anger, fear, sadness, happiness. Early theories, influenced by Charles Darwin and pegged to shared biological structures in humans, suggest there are certain universal emotions that serve as the source material for all others, as primary colors might be blended to create many new shades.
But just as later work has suggested that different cultures do not always categorize color in the same ways, there’s a growing understanding that even those supposedly “primary” emotions may hold their own meanings and nuances in different cultures that aren’t directly translatable.
Good fences make good neighbors. And strong borders make friendly relations possible.