Japanese Emotions and Feelings Vocabulary: 嬉しい, 悲しい, and the ～がる Third-Person Rule
Japanese emotions and feelings vocabulary is mostly a set of い-adjectives, such as 嬉しい ("glad") and 悲しい ("sad"). These words come with a rule no English feelings list prepares you for: you cannot put a bare emotion adjective on someone else.1 This page covers four layers: the core adjective list, the ～がる third-person fix, register and gender marking, and the feeling onomatopoeia native speakers actually reach for.
Overview
The core emotion words are wago (native Japanese) い-adjectives, with a 漢語 (Sino-Japanese) layer of する-verbs sitting above them for formal and written register.1 One verb, 怒る ("to get angry"), hides inside the set and behaves differently from its adjective neighbours.2
The feature that makes this vocabulary category special is the person of the predicate: a bare emotion adjective defaults to the speaker. To describe how a third person feels, you need a repair (～がる, ～そうだ, ～げ, or a quotation).13 That rule is the spine of this page, and everything else hangs off it.
Emotions are mostly い-adjectives (with a kango layer above)
The core Japanese emotion vocabulary is a set of 感情形容詞 (emotion adjectives): い-adjectives such as 嬉しい, 悲しい, 楽しい, 寂しい, 怖い, and 恥ずかしい. Japanese grammar separates these from 属性形容詞 (attribute adjectives, like 新しい "new"). Attribute adjectives describe objective properties rather than an experiencer's inner state.34
嬉しい is an adjective; dictionaries label it 形容詞, and its core sense is "feeling satisfaction and joy when things turn out as one wished."2
Not every emotion word in this field is an adjective. 怒る ("to get angry") is a verb (a ラ-row 五段 verb). It conjugates as a verb, and its ongoing-state form is 怒っている, never a bare adjective.2
彼女は嬉しそうに笑っている。5
"She's beaming with happiness."
トムはとても怒っている。5
"Tom is really angry."
Above the casual wago layer sits a 漢語 (Sino-Japanese) emotion stratum used in writing and formal speech: nouns that combine with する, such as 感動する ("to be moved"), 興奮する ("to be excited"), 緊張する ("to be nervous"), and 満足する ("to be satisfied"). These pattern as する-verbs, not as い-adjectives.1
とても感動しました。5
"I was deeply moved."
For learners, the three strata answer different questions. A feeling's word class decides how it conjugates and how you describe it on someone else.
The one rule that makes this category special: person of the predicate
In a plain statement, an emotion adjective takes the speaker (first person) as its experiencer. In a question, it shifts to the addressee (second person). A third person cannot be the bare subject of this kind of sentence.13
This makes ×彼は嬉しい and ×彼女は寂しい ungrammatical as plain statements about someone else's feelings. The speaker cannot directly assert another person's private inner state.1
私はとても寂しい。5
"I'm really lonely."
嬉しいですか。1
"Are you glad?"
To attribute a feeling to a third person, the speaker must reach for one of the repairs covered below: the ～がる verb, the appearance forms ～そうだ / ～げ, hearsay, or a quotation.13
In a statement, an emotion adjective with no repair describes you, not the person you are talking about. ×彼は嬉しい reads as ungrammatical or as an accidental claim to know his mind. Use 彼は嬉しがっている to report the signs you can actually see.1
Core emotions word list
Positive feelings (嬉しい, 楽しい, 安心, 満足)
嬉しい ("glad, happy") names a reactive feeling tied to a specific favorable trigger: "things turned out as I wished."2 楽しい ("fun, enjoyable") names a lasting pleasant state felt during an activity rather than a reaction to one event.1
安心 ("relieved, at ease") and 満足 ("satisfied") are 漢語 emotion words; both also pattern as な-adjectives in addition to combining with する.1
マジで嬉しい！5
"I'm really happy!"
人生は楽しい。5
"Life is enjoyable."
安心しました。5
"I feel relieved."
満足しています。5
"I'm satisfied."
A more formal, written counterpart of 嬉しい is the wago adjective 喜ばしい. It presents an outcome objectively as "something to be glad about / welcome," typical of formal and business writing, rather than reporting the speaker's private joy.2
Negative feelings (悲しい, 寂しい, 怖い, 不安)
悲しい ("sad") names sorrow over an event, while 寂しい ("lonely") names the feeling of absence or isolation. They are distinct: 寂しい is loneliness, not generic sadness.1
怖い ("scary, afraid") is an emotion adjective, and the thing feared is marked with が (its grammatical subject): 犬が怖い ("I'm afraid of dogs"). Its 漢語 counterpart for the noun "fear" is 恐怖.3
不安 ("anxious, uneasy") is a 漢語 word patterning as a な-adjective or noun (不安だ, 不安になる), part of the formal stratum above 怖い.1
悲しい。5
"I'm sad."
私はとても寂しい。5
"I'm really lonely."
犬が怖いの？5
"Are you afraid of dogs?"
不安だ。5
"I'm worried / uneasy."
Anger and irritation (怒る, 腹が立つ, イライラ)
怒る (おこる) is a verb, not an adjective: "to get angry, to lose one's temper."2 Because it is a verb, the ongoing state is the ～ている form 怒っている ("is angry"). A third person's anger can be stated directly with 怒っている, unlike a bare emotion adjective.12
腹が立つ ("to get angry," literally "the stomach stands up") is an idiomatic verb phrase. As a third-person report it switches the intransitive 腹が立つ to the transitive 腹を立てる (父は腹を立てる).1
イライラする ("to be irritated, annoyed") is an onomatopoeia-derived emotion verb, appearing as イライラしている for the ongoing state.1
何を怒っているの？5
"What are you angry about?"
彼の失礼な態度には腹が立つ。5
"His rude attitude makes me angry."
彼はイライラしていた。5
"He was irritated."
The verb 怒る is read おこる in everyday speech; the いかる reading is literary, and the noun 怒り "wrath" is the common nominal form.2
The kango / formal register column (感動, 興奮, 緊張, 後悔)
The 感情 Sino-Japanese stratum supplies the formal and written register for emotion. These words are する-verbs, often also nouns: 感動する ("be moved"), 興奮する ("be excited"), 緊張する ("be nervous"), 後悔する ("regret"), 感謝する ("be grateful"), and 満足する ("be satisfied").1
Because they are verbs, their present ongoing state uses ～している (緊張している "is nervous"), and a third person's state can be reported with ～している without the bare-adjective restriction.1
This column shows the casual-and-formal pairing used throughout this page: the wago adjective is the casual member (嬉しい, 怖い), and the kango する-verb is the formal member (感動する, 恐怖を感じる).1
すごい緊張した。5
"I was really nervous."
彼の勇気に感動した。5
"I was deeply moved by his courage."
心から感謝します。5
"I'm truly grateful."
The ～がる third-person modifier
Why you cannot say 彼は嬉しい directly
In a plain assertion, an emotion adjective describes the speaker's own inner state. So a bare ×彼は嬉しい or ×彼女は寂しい cannot assert what another person feels inside.1 The speaker has no direct access to a third party's private feeling and may report only its outward, observable signs.4
～がる is the grammaticalized repair: 彼は嬉しがっている reports that the speaker perceives outward signs (expression, behavior, words) tied to an inner "I'm glad" state.41
The meaning is observational, not mind-reading. The speaker links the person's outward 様子 (expressions, attitudes, repeated behavior) to an inferred inner state, often when the sign appears repeatedly or out of the ordinary.4
Incorrect: ×彼女は寂しい。 / Correct: 彼女は寂しがっている。1
(intended) "She is lonely." A bare adjective can't state her feeling; ～がっている reports the observed signs.
母は弟から便りがないのを寂しがっている。1
"My mother is feeling lonely that there's no word from my brother."
Forming ～がる: stem + がる, and 嬉しがる → 嬉しがっている
～がる attaches to the adjective stem (drop the final い of an い-adjective) and produces a verb. For example: 嬉しい → 嬉しがる, 寂しい → 寂しがる, 怖い → 怖がる, 恥ずかしい → 恥ずかしがる, 欲しい → 欲しがる.63
The corpus-attested set is broad. A BCCWJ (Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese) and Asahi study found ～がる attaching to 87 adjective types. Of these, 60 are emotion adjectives, including 嬉しい, 悲しい, 怖い, 恐ろしい, 寂しい (both さびしい and さみしい spellings), 恥ずかしい, 悔しい, 羨ましい, 懐かしい, and 欲しい.4
Because ～がる makes a verb, the present, ongoing third-person state is normally the progressive ～がっている, not bare ～がる: 嬉しがっている, 欲しがっている.13
彼女は新しい帽子を欲しがっている。5
"She wants a new hat."
彼は蛇を怖がっている。5
"He is afraid of snakes."
楽しい is a notable gap: it does not take ～がる (×楽しがる). The third-person repair for 楽しい is the separate verb 楽しむ ("to enjoy"), not a ～がる form. The same holds for 心配 (×心配がる → 心配する).1
妹は勉強を楽しんでいる。1
"My little sister is enjoying her studies."
The particle shift: が becomes を
Under ～がる, the thing felt about or wanted stops being the adjective's が-marked subject and becomes the verb's を-marked object. The clean contrast is 水が欲しい (adjective, が) → 水を欲しがる (verb, を).36
This が→を shift is the structural tell that the predicate has changed from adjective to verb: 犬が怖い ("dogs are scary to me") but 犬を怖がる ("he is afraid of dogs").34
子供がお菓子を欲しがっています。5
"The child wants sweets."
娘は子猫を欲しがっている。5
"My daughter wants a kitten."
You can read the whole ～がる decision as one path. An emotion い-adjective cannot describe a third person directly, so you attach がる to the stem. The が-object flips to を, and the result surfaces as ～がっている.
When NOT to use ～がる (yourself, direct quotes, ～と思っている)
～がる is third-person-only and detached or observational. You do not use it for your own feelings. For your own state, the bare adjective is correct (私は嬉しい), never ×私は嬉しがる.14
When you know a third person's feeling from their own words, a quotation is often more natural than ～がる: 「嬉しい」と言っている ("says she's glad"), or ～と思っている ("thinks that..."). The verbs 思う and 困る carry the same person restriction and use ～ている for third persons.1
戻ってきてくれて嬉しいって、トムとメアリーが言ってたよ。5
"Tom and Mary said they're glad you're back."
彼は私がうそをついたと思っている。1
"He thinks I told a lie."
Other ways to attribute a feeling to someone else
～そうだ and ～げ: "looks / seems" happy
～そうだ (appearance) attaches to the adjective stem to report a feeling read from someone's momentary look: 嬉しそうだ ("looks happy"), 悲しそうだ ("looks sad"). It reports the visible appearance now. This contrasts with ～がる, which frames a behavioral pattern related to an inner state over time.31
～げ (嬉しげ, 悲しげ, 寂しげ) is a more literary suffix meaning "with an air of." It attaches to the adjective stem to describe a feeling-laden appearance and reads as more elevated than ～そう.1
～らしい and ～そうだ (hearsay) can also attribute a third person's feeling on report rather than direct perception (彼は寂しいらしい "I hear he's lonely").3
彼女は大変嬉しそうだ。5
"She looks very happy."
トムはとても嬉しそうだった。5
"Tom looked very happy."
Quoting and perception: ～と思っている, ～のを見て
You can attribute an inner state by quoting it (～と言っている / ～と思っている) or by embedding the observed sign in a perception clause (～のを見て "seeing that..."). These patterns let the speaker report another's feeling without claiming direct access to it.1
The の-nominalized perception pattern is built into the ～がる examples themselves: 母は…便りがないのを寂しがっている packages "there's no word" as the perceived cause of the observed loneliness.1
加奈子は表面上は夫の死を悲しがっていた。4
"On the surface, Kanako was grieving her husband's death."
自分の下手な英語が恥ずかしい。5
"I'm ashamed of my poor English."
Feeling onomatopoeia (イライラ, ワクワク, ドキドキ)
The big four: ワクワク, ドキドキ, イライラ, ウキウキ
A productive layer of native emotion vocabulary is mimetic (擬態語, words that imitate states or sensations): ワクワク (excited anticipation), ドキドキ (heart-pounding nervousness or thrill), イライラ (irritation), and ウキウキ (cheerful, light-hearted excitement). These typically combine with する or are used adverbially.1
Because these する-verbs come from mimetics, they carry the same first-person experiencer restriction as the adjectives. A plain ×花子はわくわくする is rejected as a third-person report and is repaired by context or ～している.1
ドキドキ is literally a heart-beating sensation, so it often appears with 胸 or 心臓 as the part that pounds (胸がドキドキする). Its meaning spans "nervous" and "thrilled."1
ワクワクする。5
"I'm excited."
胸がドキドキするよ。5
"My heart's pounding."
なんでイライラしてるの？5
"Why are you in a bad mood?"
メグがウキウキしてる。5
"Meg is in high spirits."
In casual conversation, these mimetics are common and often stand in for textbook adjectives. For example, a native speaker may use ワクワクする where a learner might reach for 楽しみだ.1
は vs が with emotion predicates
Who feels it: 私は寂しい vs テストが心配だ
With an emotion predicate, the experiencer is typically the topic and takes は (私は寂しい). The trigger or object of the feeling takes が. Adjectives like 怖い and 心配だ and the desire word 欲しい mark their object with が: 犬が怖い, 将来が心配だ.31
は and が do different jobs, and they can co-occur: 私は犬が怖い ("as for me, dogs are scary") fronts the experiencer with は and marks the feared thing with が.3
When the predicate is verbified with ～がる, this が-marked object flips to を (犬を怖がる); the は/が experiencer-trigger split is a property of the adjective construction.34
将来が心配なの？5
"Are you worried about the future?"
私はトムが心配だ。5
"I'm worried about Tom."
何が怖いの？5
"What are you afraid of?"
Gendered and register-marked emotion words
Soft, intensity, and gender-leaning expressions
Word choice can mark the same feeling for register: casual 嬉しい or intensified めっちゃ嬉しい・マジで嬉しい contrasts with the formal, written 喜ばしい. 喜ばしい presents an outcome objectively as "welcome" rather than as the speaker's private joy.2
Sentence-final marking shifts the social color of the same emotion clause. Feminine-leaning casual endings (…わ / …の) and masculine or neutral casual endings (…ぞ / …よ) attach to the same emotion predicate. These are tendencies of speech style, not grammatical rules of the emotion word itself.1
The さびしい / さみしい reading choice is also register-marked: さびしい is the textbook and broadcast-standard reading. さみしい is the more colloquial, subjective-sounding variant.7
寂しいわ。5
"I'm lonely."
心配したぞ。5
"I was worried about you."
めっちゃ嬉しいです！5
"I'm super happy!"
The 「…わ」(feminine-leaning) and 「…ぞ」(masculine-leaning) endings are descriptions of speech persona, not properties of the emotion words. The same 嬉しい or 寂しい takes any of these endings depending on the speaker's register and persona.1
Good to know
怒る is a verb, 嬉しい is an adjective (the conjugation trap)
A frequent error treats 怒る as if it were an い-adjective and produces the non-existent ×彼は怒い for "he is angry." The correct ongoing-state form is the ～ている form of a verb.
彼は怒っている。2
"He is angry."
Within one semantic field, 怒る is a verb while 嬉しい and 悲しい are い-adjectives.2 A verb's ongoing state is the ～ている form, not a bare adjective. Because 怒る is a verb, a third person's anger can be stated directly with 怒っている, unlike a bare emotion adjective.21
寂しい vs 淋しい, さびしい vs さみしい (the variant readings)
There are two kanji and two readings for "lonely." 寂 is a 常用漢字 (regular-use kanji) carrying the official kun-readings さび・さびしい・さびれる. 淋 is not in the 常用漢字表 (it is 表外, outside the list), so official documents, news, and textbooks use 寂しい.8
Both 寂しい and 淋しい can be read either さびしい or さみしい. NHK's usage handbook records both readings without ranking them. Still, さびしい is the standard broadcast and textbook reading, and さみしい is the more colloquial, subjective-sounding one.7 Historically, the word descends from さぶし → さびし, with さみし emerging later.7
～がる is observational, not mind-reading (the politeness logic)
Japanese grammar marks the boundary between what the speaker can know directly (their own feeling) and what they can only infer (another's). A bare emotion adjective asserts an inner state and so defaults to the speaker.1
～がる explicitly says "I'm reading this off the person's outward 様子," which is why it is third-person and carries a detached, observational tone.4 Remember 嬉しがる as "acting glad / showing glad signs," and you will never put a bare ×彼は嬉しい on someone else.4
See also
- Emotion Onomatopoeia: ドキドキ, ワクワク, イライラ
- Japanese Onomatopoeia: The Four Classes (giongo, gitaigo)
- Body Parts and Health Vocabulary in Japanese: 体, 痛い, and the が-Pattern
- Japanese Adjectives Overview: The Two Classes (い-形容詞 vs な-形容詞)
- は vs が in Japanese: A Beginner's First Pass
- Inferential Suffixes in Japanese: ～そう, ～よう, ～らしい, ～みたい Compared