Emotional Intelligence – expressing emotions in Chinese

Emotional intelligence is the ability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and that of others. It also includes people’s ability to discern between different types of emotions, appropriately label them, and use this information to adjust to their environment in order to achieve their goals.

Why are we talking about this? The first step in developing emotional intelligence is to correctly identify emotions and to do that, you need to know the words to describe them. Even if you’re only interested in getting your child to have basic daily conversation in Chinese, knowing the correct Chinese terms for emotions is very necessary. After all, talking about how they feel is a normal part of general conversation.

You could get away with just teaching your child some basic rote responses to questions like, “How are you?”. Even in Anglophone societies, no one actually expects a real, truthful answer the question beyond, “Fine, and you?”. However, if you want your child to be able to effectively communicate their thoughts and feelings in Chinese, they will need to go beyond the basics. They will need access to the full spectrum of human emotions (or at the very least, be able to identify them). This will equip our children with the tools to navigate socially and thus be aware of others, and also to name their own emotions and thus be more self-aware.

Basic Emotions

In psychology, there is a general theory that there are only four basic biological emotions: anger, fear, happiness, and sadness. For a quick review, here are some ways to say these terms in Chinese:

English	情感詞
Happy	快樂
Sad	難過
Angry	生氣
Scared	害怕

While it may be tempting to teach your child the emotion while they’re experiencing it, it may not stick so well in their brain unless they’re feeling happy. However, you can say things in Chinese like, “Oh, I’m sorry you’re feeling sad.” (嗯，我知道你很難過。) Even though they’re not officially learning the term, they are hearing it in its correct application.

In the following weeks, we will share activities with which you can teach your children basic emotion terms as well as harder, more complex phrases. In the meantime, you could probably start with the more common feelings such happy, sad, scared, and angry. Those tend to be the emotions we all feel on a regular basis anyway.

Complex Emotions

English	情感詞
Shame	慚愧(cán kuì)
Despair	失望(shī wàng)、絕望(jué wàng)
Embarrassment	尷尬(gān gà)、難為情(nán wéi qíng)
Pride	自豪(zì háo)
Surprise	意外(yì wài)、驚訝 (jīng yà)
Lonely	寂寞(jì mò)、孤單(gū dān)
Jealous	妒忌(dù jì)
Guilt	内疚(nèi jiù)

Common Sayings re: Emotions

If you want your child to be a little more advanced and culturally literate, you can also teach your child emotion-related idioms. While this isn’t vital, like many things, it will enrich your child’s Chinese vocabulary, making them sound more native in conversations. Plus, it will also illustrate the color and creativity of the Chinese language.

For instance, 吃醋literally means, “to eat vinegar.” It describes the situation of being envious that someone else is getting something that you’re not. Doesn’t eating vinegar adequately capture both the facial expression as well as the feeling itself? It’s also similar to the English idiom, “sour grapes” wherein a person disparages something they wanted but didn’t get. Isn’t it interesting that both of them have the same “sour” description?

For your reference, here are a few more Chinese idioms and phrases that relate to emotions. Some of them are quite vivid and fun for children to learn:

Emotion	Chinese expression	Literal translation
To feel sad	心酸	to feel sore in your heart
Worry	提心吊膽	carrying your heart and dangling your gut
Angry	發火	set off a fire
Scared	屁滾尿流	to piss in one's pants in terror
Shameless	死不要臉	doesn't care about losing one's face
Proud, Arrogant	自高自大	to praise one's own greatness
Happy	眉開眼笑	brows raised in delight, eyes laughing

Again, while your child can understand and explain their feelings without the usage of these terms, the fuller and more robust you can make your child’s vocabulary, the more likely they will use Chinese in everyday speech. We tend to default to whatever language we’re the most capable in to express ourselves. Teaching our children a range of emotional vocabulary will help them internally, socially, and with Chinese fluency.

Emotional Intelligence – expressing emotions in Chinese