I don’t just ‘love you’, I ‘saranghae’; on the differences between Korean and English words for emotions
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2026-04-16
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en
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This paper examines the differences between words describing emotions in the Korean and the English language through an original subtitle corpus made with subtitles from reality shows and documentaries. The findings show that there are several Korean emotion words that do not have a one-on-one translation in English. The English translations of the Korean emotion words were all of a similar valence, providing further evidence for a universal tendency for languages to only group emotional concepts of a similar valence in one word. Part of the differences between the language’s emotion words seems to be rooted in cultural aspects, such as Korea’s collectivistic culture and high tendency of uncertainty avoidance.
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Faculteit der Letteren