Yeah, if the English language had any words for feelings that aren't hopelessly vague
I suspect this is because of large psychological differences between humans. Specifically, not all humans experience all feelings; thus when a human hears a word referring to a feeling he hasn't experienced he assumes it refers to the closest feeling that he has.
I'm given to understand that English is unusually bad in this regard; that would seem to screen out standard human variance unless English-speakers are unusually varied.
Also, I don't think it's generalizing from one example; humans demonstrate pretty standard emotions (and facial expressions, for that matter) AFAICT.
(Also, there's The Psychological Unity of Mankind. We don't want to overgeneralize, sure, but evidence regarding one human mind is, in fact, evidence regarding all of them. It's far from overwhelming evidence, but still.)
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