this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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Fundamental misunderstanding of English.
"I am sad" -- am here is a copula. It indicates a link between the subject (I) and subject-complement (sad). In this case, it's saying "subject (I) has property (sad)." It does not equate the subject and subject-complement.
Not all languages work like this. In Mandarin for instance, 我是伤心* (wǒ (I) shì (am) shāngxīn (sad)*) would be seen as grammatically incorrect or at least weird. This would literally mean "I am sad" (adjectives in Mandarin operate as stative verbs, so the correct way to say this is without a copula -- i.e. 我很伤心 (wǒ (I) hěn (~quite/~very) shāngxīn (sad)). (You could drop the 很 (quite), and just say 我伤心, but the connotation in this case is that you're setting up for a juxtaposition, e.g. "I'm sad, you're not sad."))
As a Spanish native I was very surprised when I learnt that "soy" and "estoy" both are translated as "I am" in English.
You can either be something because it is something inherent to your being "I am a happy person" or be something at this moment "I am happy". Both are expressed by the same verb, but mean very different things. In Spanish it would be "Soy una persona feliz" and "Estoy feliz".
Unless those differences have different words, this is more a linguist difference than a difference of feelings created by it inside people.
That's true. 'I am tall' ≠ "I am height"
I will say, as someone who lived through chronic pain for years, saying I have pain, rather than saying I'm in pain feels quite distinct and... Less hopeless? You're not incorrect, you're just not recognizing the impact and power words can have. There are whole therapies that specialize in reshaping our narratives, despite "I am sad" and "I feel sad" essentially meaning the same thing grammatically.
"In pain", to me implies that it's happening right now, where as "having pain" is a long term thing.
Fair! To me it meant something that I was carrying with me, and made it feel more transient.
Ah interesting.
If it helps you to view language this way, then I think that's great. But you should also recognize that yours is not a universal understanding of what's connoted by this grammatical structure.
I really sympathize with chronic pain, as I also suffer chronic pain. But for me, I don't think changing the words I use would really help me.
And that's completely ok if it doesn't help you, I don't mean to invalidate your own experience. I was using a personal anecdote to show how language can influence thought, though there are better examples- like the Australian Aboriginal tribal languages that lack words for "left" and "right" and refer to everything relative to cardinal directions. As a result, they have impeccable senses of direction.
Or another example, linguistic relativity in colours (ie. Languages without a word for a colour like pink might have trouble distinguishing pink from red).
And if reframing words wasn't helpful for some people, there wouldn't be Narrative Therapy centres still running.
What does this even mean?
Are you really telling a person with chronic pain that they don't understand their coping mechanisms? That they shouldn't do it because you don't like it?
No, I'm not saying that. I think I clearly indicated that I approve of your coping mechanism with the my first sentence, "I think that's great." I meant that genuinely.
I'm saying I don't think your coping mechanism reflects a deep linguistic truth.
That's okay, it doesn't need to be linguistically precise to help with pain. If it works as a coping mechanism for you, it might work for others. But because I don't think it reflects a deep linguistic truth, I don't think this coping mechanism is likely to be widely useful for everyone with chronic pain, and I don't think this is likely to be helpful for many non-chronic-pain-havers to better understand chronic pain. Or perhaps it might help some people understand better, but if one's not clear that this is a coping mechanism that helps psychologically, and instead presented as linguistic fact, I think it will actually be on net harmful to the credibility of people with chronic pain.
Okay, so I guess part of where we differ is that I completely reject the idea of 'linguistic truth'. To me, there is no one singular way to communicate that is 'correct', all behavior is a form of communication and language is descriptive and not prescriptive. It's inherently subjective and not objective.
I also do the reframing to help with my mental health problems, and don't think about it as linguistic fact, I'm just looking for different words to describe the same feeling, but choosing my words based on connotation. It's almost super-linguistic, in that it's about the meta understanding and not the dictionary definition.
There is no such thing as a 'linguistic fact', what meta meaning words have will change based on geographical location.
You are grammatically right. But in practice the fact that am has also the meaning of equating the subject to the object puts the idea in people's head (at some degree, unconsciously, at least) that they equate to what they feel.
Fundamental understanding of communication.
This post is communicating that we are not our emotions, and that they are a state that passes. it's just using language as a metaphor.
I'm sorry for being cheeky, i couldn't resist. But thank you for the explanation, i did not know that. Is it the same thing when i say "this is my best friend" but i obviously don't mean i own them?
yes, the posessive in english indicates many things, and one possibility is ownership. It can also indicate a link or relationship that is not ownership -- as a child I never thought I owned "my father."
Just bugs me when people look at one meaning of a word or grammatical construction and then assume that's the only meaning.
I agree that we are not our emotions, and I think that's a useful idea to conveny. But I think OOP's take on English grammar is gravely misinformed. Imagine if she had a similar take about a language she didn't know well; she'd be rightly criticized by native speakers.