Have you ever thought about the difference among “気持ち”, ”機嫌” and ”気分”? Do you fully understand which word is the appropriate one under what situation when you want to express “feeling”? Today, I’ll show you how to distinguish these 3 words.
With 3 words, “気持ち” is the word with the broadest meaning. In general, it describes a mental state such as happy or sad. Therefore, you can express people’s feeling using a phrase like “嬉しい気持ち” or ”悲しい気持ち”. Meanwhile, it also means mental preparation.
Comparing with”気持ち”, “機嫌” represents a temporary mood. Except “嬉しい” and ”悲しい”, “機嫌” covers a wide range of types of feelings. However, you can only use good or bad to describe “機嫌”. In contrast, “気分” is also the word to describe a temporary feeling as “機嫌”. However, comparing with “機嫌” which represents the mental feeling, “気分” is usually used to express the physical feeling.
Let’s go through a small practice. Please try to consider the difference among “気持ちが悪い”, ”機嫌が悪い” and ”気分が悪い”. It is not simply just adding 悪い on those words. 機嫌が悪い means that a person is temporarily in a bad mood such as anxiety. 気分が悪い need to be considered in two different situations. If the reason for 悪い is because of an external issue, then it means the bad feeling about that issue. If the reason for 悪いis because of an internal issue, then it means the bad physical condition such as feeling like vomiting. 気持ちが悪い can be used to describe the bad physical condition as well, though, it can also mean the disgust about something.
See you next week.