'Equivalent' words used to express emotions in different languages vary greatly in their meanings

People's understanding of supposedly'equivalent' words used to express emotions -- such as love, fear or anxiety -- vary greatly between different languages, a study found. Researchers studied words describing emotion in more than 2,000 languages and found'significant variation' in how emotions are expressed across cultures. For example, the researchers found that among the languages of the Pacific Islands, the words equivalent to the English word'surprise' are closely associated with'fear'. In contrast, the words for surprise in the languages of south-east Asia are more closely connected to concepts like'hope' and'wanting'. The team also found words with no equivalent in other languages, like Portuguese's'saudade', a deep melancholy for something lost, which has no English counterpart.