I think empathy is putting yourself in someone else's shoes well enough to feel what they're feeling (or at least figure out what they're feeling), and sympathy is actually caring when someone else is feeling bad.

If I'm correct, then we already have attitudinals for empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is an actual emotion, covered by .uu (often translated as pity, but also translatable as sympathy or compassion). Empathy is feeling someone else's emotions, which is covered by an attitudinal modifier, se'inai (se'i meaning "to feel selfishly").

>>682

I agree about "uu".

But empathy is "dai", not "se'i".

"se'i"/"se'inai" indicate the orientation of the emotion/attitude, not the source. "oise'i" is a complain I direct against myself, "oise'inai" is a complain I direct against someone else. But that doesn't mean I'm empathizing with anyone else. If you hurt yourself for example and I feel with you, then I would say "oidai", as in "ouch, that must have hurt".

>>689

I think that the empathy that they are talking about is different from [zo <<dai]. [zo <<dai] means that it is someone else's emotion, quite simply. They are saying "I know what you have been through".

For their empathy, I would use [lo'u <<ba'anai>> le'u], which means that you have experienced in the past and are remembering it, with no connotation of pity or compassion.

For the sympathy, as aforementioned, use [zo <<.uu].

Combine them and you get the "putting yourself in someone else's shoes well enough to feel what they're feeling"-in-a-compassionate-manner thing.

>>692

Having experienced before what someone else is experiencing now is a good basis for feeling empathy. But I don't think it is in itself an empathetic expression.

I agree you can use "ba'anai" to indicate that you have had some experience. But I still think "dai" is how one expresses empathy.

Concrete example:

ba'anai mi cortu lo denci ca lo pavlamjeftu
[I remember] I had a toothache last week.

uu do nau cortu lo denci
[compassion] You now have a toothache.

oidai
Ouch! [empathetic expression of pain]

>>692
"[zo <<dai] means that it is someone else's emotion, quite simply."

I wouldn't think "oidai" is simply someone else's emotion; however empathetic/sympathetic it may be in nature, it comes down to the speaker's psychological state. Empathy/sympathy itself is one form of emotion; "dai" expresses the speaker's emotion.

There is also epistemological limitation. My empathy/sympathy can be off the point. If I feel "oiru'edai" towards you, you may yet actually be feeling "oicu'i". "-dai" isn't necessarily someone else's emotion.

>>696
>>699

I was basing it off of responses to (going by memory here...) comment 225 (?)

Such as something like:

"So once you understand basically that that's what an attitudinal does, it's easy to see what "dai" does slightly differently: It hooks the sentence not to you (that is, to "mi") but to some unspecified other party. "mi ti klama .ia dai", I wil go there, soimeone believes. "mi ti klama .ui dai", I will go there, which makes someone happy. "mi ti klama .au dai", someone want me to go there. It doesn't say who, except that it's someone other than the default person ("mi")."

&

"Let's take another one, ".uu" means pity, sympathy, compassion. If ou say ".uu", you're the one feeling compassionate. If you say ".uu dai", it's someone else who's feeling compassionate."

Did I get the quotes correct? If I messed up, I am sorry. But give me some credit- I am going by memory here. Spelling only barely counts (I am retyping it- to lazy to find it and copy and paste).

>>700

That's not totally wrong, but it's not quite right. "dai" indicates that the attitude is empathetic. It is related to someone else in the sense that you are putting yourself in the place of someone else, but you can't really express someone else's emotions for them and remain completely detached. You can describe someone else's attitude neutrally: "he was very surprized" for example. But if you say "uedai" you are yourself expressing surprise. It may be that it is not a quite real surprise, but it is you who is expressing it. Suppose you give a present to a child, and you know they will be suprised by it. The child opens the package and you say "uadai". You are not truly surprised, because you knew what it was, but you express surprise anyway in empathy, because that's what you expect the child is feeling. But it's not at all like saying "she's surprised", or "you're surprized". It's like saying "Wow!"

>>701

I kind of see. Could you run it by me again?

>>669

[zo'o]

See the evil you unleashed? ;)

lol, I only jokin'. [zo'onai] Seriously, do not be afraid of asking questions- it stimulates conversation, exploration, and understanding. Thank you.