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A feeling can be real and precise in one language and only describable in another — Portuguese "saudade" is a bittersweet longing English needs a whole phrase for. A bigger feeling vocabulary is a map with more named places, never proof one language "feels more". These words are honest seeds pending native review, and nothing you guess is ever saved.
A case · you decide
Mira finds the word
Mira — seventeen, back home after a year abroad, missing a place and a feeling she has no English word for
The idea in play: the affect map is universal, but the WORDS a language gives a feeling are not — some feelings have one precise word in one tongue and only a whole phrase in another.
Mira keeps saying "I miss it, but not exactly — it is more like… missing AND being glad I had it, at the same time." English keeps handing her half the feeling: "nostalgia" is only the sweet part, "homesick" only the sad.
Her Portuguese friend hears her circling it and says one word: saudade. A tender, bittersweet longing for what is absent — the ache and the sweetness together, in a single word.
The feeling was always there; Mira could even place it on the map (a little unpleasant, low energy, a quiet ache). What she lacked was the WORD — and having it makes the feeling easier to hold and to share.
That is what WorldFeels is: not that some languages "feel more", but that each one names a different set of places on the same map. A bigger vocabulary is a map with more labels.
How does Mira treat the discovery?
Notice: the feeling did not change; the vocabulary did. A word is a label on a shared map, not a passport that makes a feeling real.
Everyone feels across the same map. What differs is how many places their language has named — and you can borrow labels from any of them.
Joon and Mira explain a feeling with no English word
Joon & Mira — seventeen, Mira's friend, trying to explain a word from his family's language
The idea in play: a feeling with no English word can still be shared — by describing the scene, or by borrowing the word.
Mira misses sobremesa: the long, easy time at the table after a meal, when nobody rushes off. Joon wants to explain a Korean word, jeong, a deep bond of care that grows between people over time.
Untranslate is the feeling with no English word at all.
Loanword is the word borrowed whole because a phrase never quite fits.
How should they explain their words to friends?
What did the English word lose, if you used one?
The feeling map is shared. The words for it are not, and that is worth knowing.
Sofía & Mira — seventeen, bilingual, who noticed that a word sounds loving at home and cold at school
The idea in play: the same word can carry a different tone in different mouths — register is part of what a word means.
Sofía's grandmother calls her by a nickname that means "little fat one," and it is pure affection. When a classmate overheard it and repeated it, it sounded like an insult.
Register is the tone a word carries: tender in one mouth, rude in another.
Cognate warns about the look-alike trap: a word that seems to mean one thing can mean something else across languages or settings.
How should Sofía explain it to the classmate?
Can a word mean something different depending on who says it?
A word carries its speaker with it. Tone is meaning too.
