A recent study revealed the “happiest” languages – do you speak any of them?
The team of Dr Peter Dodds from the University of Vermont decided to reveal which are the most positive languages in the world, using scientific methods. The study found out that Spanish can be labeled as the happiest language. But let’s see…
…How the study works
The researchers built a database of billions of words, using online resources such as Google Books, Twitter, subtitles on films and TV shows, song lyrics and the New York Times and the Daily Mail reports.
The languages taking part in the study were Spanish, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Indonesian, Korean, Russian and German. The database was used to comply a list of 10,000 most common words in each language. Afterwards each word was marked as “positive” or “negative” based on its meaning. For example, “death” or “kill” are labeled as negative, while “happiness” or “smile” – as positive.
So far so good. But let’s see…
…What the study revealed
The researchers found that each of the ten languagees studied was inherently positive, and more words fell on the bright side of the centre than on the dark one.
‘The words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use,” the study says.
Here are:
Top 10 happiest languages
1. Spanish
2. Portuguese
3. English
4. Indonesian
5. French
6. German
7. Arabic
8. Russian
9. Korean
10. Chinese
The researchers found that each of the ten languages studied was inherently positive, and more words fell on the bright side of the center than on the dark one. Thankfully, several of these are some of the easier languages to learn so you can get started right away.
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