Spanish is the happiest language

Feeling down lately? Perhaps it's time to consider learning Spanish. According to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, Spanish was the happiest, out of all those tested.

Introduction

Feeling down lately? Perhaps it’s time to consider learning Spanish. According to a recent study by the National Academy of Sciences, Spanish was the happiest, out of all those tested. This study confirms the Pollyanna hypothesis, which suggests that humans have a natural bias towards positivity. Experts from the University of Vermont and the MITRE Corporation analyzed vast amounts of text from various sources, including Twitter, and discovered that this tendency towards positivity is especially true in the Spanish language.

Evaluation

After evaluating 100,000 words from 10 different languages in terms of origin and culture: English, Mexican Spanish , French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Korean,Chinese (simplified), Russian, Indonesian, and Arabic, a team of scientists found that there was a general tendency towards positivity in the most commonly used words in each language. To further evaluate this trend, native speakers of these languages were then asked to rank them on a nine-point emotional scale (being 1 the most negative mark and 9 the most positive one).

According to Peter Dodds, the co-leader of the study, the most significant discovery is that “every language skews towards happiness.”

However, some languages have proven to be happier than others. The Chinese language ranked at the bottom of this scale, followed by Korean, Russian, and Arabic. Spanish, on the other hand, ranked at the top of the list, closely followed by Brazilian Portuguese, English, and Indonesian. Interestingly, Spanish uses nine positive words for every negative word, while Chinese only uses three positive words for every seven negative words.

Do languages have a positive or negative connotation?

In linguistics, it’s widely debated whether languages have a positive or negative connotation. Many theories suggest that language carefully selects words to project its meaning onto the listener. To convey a positive message, speakers must use powerful and positive words. Words do change connotation depending on the language, and while the basic definition remains the same, the connotation changes due to generalization or extension. This means that a word with one meaning may have a different emotional or contextual implication in a foreign language. Narrowing is the process of becoming more specific, while specialization is the opposite.

However, the degree of positivity varied significantly between languages and platforms. These findings could have important implications for how we understand and communicate across different cultures and languages.

Happiness signals

This tool can monitor the ‘happiness signals’ in English-language tweets almost in real-time, allowing users to see how these signals differ daily, weekly, and monthly. The study results reveal that Vermont in the US has the highest happiness signal, while Louisiana has the lowest. Although the hedonometer can only track English-language tweets, the next objective is to expand its use to other languages and demographic groups.

Why do we tend to use positive words?

According to linguistics, language is a reflection of our social nature. As social beings, our language tells a story about our behavior. If language shapes the way we think, using positive words to adopt a more optimistic perspective on life seems to be a reasonable hypothesis. Despite some possible limitations, such as whether the words truly reflect our thoughts and emotions, or if they are purely circumstantial, the fact that we lean towards positivity in our language is a positive sign of our ongoing pursuit of happiness. Interestingly, Spanish speakers seem to be leading the way in this linguistic pursuit.