11 ms·

How to Say “I Love You” When the Language Doesn’t Exist

60 points by Thevet 8y ago

DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
The book, "The Five Love Languages" answers the question extremely well. Anyone planning to get married should consider it mandatory reading.
nvahalik 8y ago
> The phrase most directly means “(I) am loving (you),” as if to convey that love is an active labor, not just an amorphous feeling tossed between two parties. I really connect with this. In the west, love seems to be this thing you cannot control. It can come upon you suddenly and leave you just as suddenly. In that context, "love" is a scary thing. It seems to have a mind of it's own. Truly, I don't believe that it's love at all, but usually either lust or infatuation in disguise. I believe whole heartedly that "love" is always an act. You can say you "love" someone while actively doing things that prove you do not love them. Likewise, you can actively show someone love without saying anything to them. True love is a controlled action and is accompanied by feelings (at least at times), but it does not have to be. Perhaps the Japanese got this completely right.
- ReverseCold 8y ago
  > Perhaps the Japanese got this completely right. You can't just say that and then not elaborate :) Edit: Oops, didn't read the article.
  - c22 8y ago
    Gp was probably assuming an audience who had read the article. From the article: In Japanese, the phrase “I love you” exists linguistically, but does not exist culturally. Linguistically, it is best translated as 愛してる or Aishiteru. Unlike English, it does not contain the “I” and “you” involved in “I love you”; instead, the “I” is implicit, belonging to the speaker only in assumption, as is the “you.” The phrase most directly means “(I) am loving (you),” as if to convey that love is an active labor, not just an amorphous feeling tossed between two parties.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    In English, we have a lot of confusion because the word love is both a very and a noun. The verb describes acting in a deeply caring fashion. The noun describe a feeling. This is why we can have song lines like "Are you going to stay with the one who loves you? Or are you going back to the one you love?" Very often, when someone says "I love you" they mean "I have strong feelings because you are good to me." They don't necessarily mean "So I intend to be good to you." It's often a pretty parasitic pronouncement. /cynic
- pertymcpert 8y ago
  I can disprove that with a counterexample. I love my wife. It's a feeling I have within my chest, but it's not infatuation which fades after a few months. It really is an amorphous feeling that's deeply rooted. And yes that might make it scary, but that's the reality.
- JdeBP 8y ago
  > In the west The people in this very discussion pointing out differences and difficulties translating between English and French, Spanish, and (Ancient) Greek should disabuse one of the notion that this is some "Western" thing.
modzu 8y ago
whorf sapir, lets go
dkulchenko 8y ago
Russian is the same way. You can translate "I love you" linguistically, but it doesn't really make sense to say - people express it through actions rather than words. It's definitely an interesting (and rather significant) difference in Western culture that grants the 3 words such importance.
- coffeemug 8y ago
  What do you mean? It absolutely makes sense to say (я тебя люблю). People tend to say it less frequently because the communists attempted to eradicate display of superfluous emotions by pretending they don't exist, but if you go back to the classics the characters talk about love all the time.
  - dkulchenko 8y ago
    I didn't mean it didn't make sense grammatically, just that it's not really something people use in the way they do here in the U.S. Anecdotal, but growing up surrounded by Russians and consuming Russian media daily, "я тебя люблю" as a phrase is something I've heard uttered by others maybe a dozen times, ever, compared to American culture where it's omnipresent and not uncommon to use many times a day. Movies and books do talk about love, of course, Russian poetry especially expresses love in a truly amazing way. But the article is referring to the frequent conversational use and Western importance of "I love you", and in that sense, there's a major cultural difference. Didn't know about the historical context behind it - that's an interesting point.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
In French, Je t'aime means both I love you and I like you.
- gumby 8y ago
  Oais, mais on dit aussi « Je t'adore »
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    I wouldn't interpret "I adore you" to be the same thing as "I love you." Though a quick Google suggests that one definition of adore is love and respect deeply. But it would just never occur to me that adore could be a synonym for love. It just doesn't strike me as such per se.
    - zdkl 8y ago
      The meaning can be close to idolatry, which furthers the notion of love-like declarations as parasitic in western semantics.
    - jandrewrogers 8y ago
      The semantic equivalent and literal equivalent of the English "I love you" are not the same in many languages. Cultural colors the semantics of nominally equivalent expressions -- don't think of it as a synonym. There are some languages, for example, that have a literal translation of "I love you" but the semantically equivalent expression, when translated to English, is "you are precious to me". It would be awkward to express the English semantics via literal translation, as it has different connotations. The meaning is more important than the literal expression.
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        In what languages would you say "you are precious to me"?
        8y ago
ekianjo 8y ago
Poor article - of course it exists. The right answer is at the end, you say 大好き usually in Japanese, nobody uses 愛してる, its too formal and not commonly used. and usually the proper way to say it is X　のことが好きです which is difficult to translate but it's a subtle nuance referring to the substance of the person instead of just the person.
- heroprotagonist 8y ago
  I wonder if Google's Pixel Buds will ever accidentally trigger a romance. のことが好きです == "I like that": https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8C%E5%A5%BD%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99 https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81... This would make for a rather unlikely, but interesting, meet-cute.
  - airza 8y ago
    This is just google trying to make sense of nonsense Japanese; the Xのこと is something like 'X's characteristics' (sounds really stiff, but that's how i'd concisely explain it) so のごとが好きです is like "i like 's characteristics" and is semantically meaningless.
  - TuGuQuKu 8y ago
    The parent comment just left out the 大 (big/great) from the sentence example 好き - like 大好き - love (lit. "great fondness")
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      You dont need dai- to declare your love in Japanese, unless you are an immature teenager.
  - keithnz 8y ago
    interesting I deleted two characters off https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8C%E5%A5%BD%E3%81%8D https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81... and it translates as I love you :) no idea how it would come across in japanese
gsaga 8y ago
Ask Deadpool, he knows a lot of good ways of doing that without words https://www.google.co.in/search?q=deadpool+2018+head+stab+scene&client=ms-android-acer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjr4Kri34TdAhXJdysKHSj1Cv8Q_AUIBygC&biw=360&bih=511#imgrc=80h7Qv-OEYBnBM%3A https://www.google.co.in/search?q=deadpool+2018+head+stab+sc...
mmphosis 8y ago
qaparHa'qu'
- paranoidrobot 8y ago
  That's expressing the opposite of hate, however. Which isn't necessarily love. In Klingon, Love would be better expressed through actions. In this way, Klingon has the same issue as Japanese.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gumby 8y ago
I found that after almost 25 years I'd forgotten how to be romantic in English. Despite speaking English also all that time, and watching plenty of rom-coms and the like, I just didn't know how any more.
natecavanaugh 8y ago
Something else I've recently found out from an ex, I always thought `te quiero` (in Spanish) meant "I love you", but really means something like "I feel fondness for you" (and can be used between family and close friends), but `te amo` means "I love you". First time she told me, I almost broke down in tears. It's amazing how much language affects how we relate. Edit: after learning the difference, and because she wasn't ready to say it, even though I was, and not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I invented `te quieramo` as a nice substitute. She seemed to enjoy that :)
- glandium 8y ago
  I've always found the subtle variations in roman languages to be interesting. At least in those I know. In spanish, you have "te quiero", from the verb "querer", which also means want. And "te amo", from the verb "amar", which has the same root as the french "aimer" or the italian "amare", used, respectively in "je t'aime" and "ti amo". I don't know about italian, but in french, "aimer" has both the meaning of "querer" and "amar" depending how you use it. Then, you have catalan, which uses "estimar" in "t'estimo", which also is used with both meanings and has the same root as the english esteem.
  - klez 8y ago
    In Italian you would say "ti amo" to a significant other. When talking about a person you may want a relationship with you would say "mi piace" (I like him/her). If you're referring to a friend or a relative, you would say "ti voglio bene" (which is a different connotation of "I love you"). If you're talking about something, you would say "mi piace" (as in "mi piace il cioccolato" -> "I like chocolate") unless you really like it, in which case you can as well say "amo il cioccolato" ("I love chocolate") or "adoro il cioccolato" ("I adore(?) chocolate").
    - natecavanaugh 8y ago
      Does 'mi piace' mean something like 'I desire'?
senozhatsky 8y ago
In Belarusian language we have two different "love" words. There is one "love" [кахаю - ka-ha-you] for "I love [ka-ha-you] you / her / him", and there is another one which we use in any other case, like "I love English language". The latter cannot be used when you express your feelings for another person. Oddly enough, I don't think we use ka-ha-you in "I love myself" that often, most likely there will be the same "love" word as in "I love English language". -ss
mhd 8y ago
In the Bavarian dialect, you can't say "I love you" without switching out to proper German. We do have at least two words for peeing, though.

60 points by Thevet 8y ago

The book, "The Five Love Languages" answers the question extremely well. Anyone planning to get married should consider it mandatory reading.

nvahalik 8y ago

> The phrase most directly means “(I) am loving (you),” as if to convey that love is an active labor, not just an amorphous feeling tossed between two parties. I really connect with this. In the west, love seems to be this thing you cannot control. It can come upon you suddenly and leave you just as suddenly. In that context, "love" is a scary thing. It seems to have a mind of it's own. Truly, I don't believe that it's love at all, but usually either lust or infatuation in disguise. I believe whole heartedly that "love" is always an act. You can say you "love" someone while actively doing things that prove you do not love them. Likewise, you can actively show someone love without saying anything to them. True love is a controlled action and is accompanied by feelings (at least at times), but it does not have to be. Perhaps the Japanese got this completely right.

ReverseCold 8y ago
> Perhaps the Japanese got this completely right. You can't just say that and then not elaborate :) Edit: Oops, didn't read the article.
- c22 8y ago
  Gp was probably assuming an audience who had read the article. From the article: In Japanese, the phrase “I love you” exists linguistically, but does not exist culturally. Linguistically, it is best translated as 愛してる or Aishiteru. Unlike English, it does not contain the “I” and “you” involved in “I love you”; instead, the “I” is implicit, belonging to the speaker only in assumption, as is the “you.” The phrase most directly means “(I) am loving (you),” as if to convey that love is an active labor, not just an amorphous feeling tossed between two parties.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  In English, we have a lot of confusion because the word love is both a very and a noun. The verb describes acting in a deeply caring fashion. The noun describe a feeling. This is why we can have song lines like "Are you going to stay with the one who loves you? Or are you going back to the one you love?" Very often, when someone says "I love you" they mean "I have strong feelings because you are good to me." They don't necessarily mean "So I intend to be good to you." It's often a pretty parasitic pronouncement. /cynic
pertymcpert 8y ago
I can disprove that with a counterexample. I love my wife. It's a feeling I have within my chest, but it's not infatuation which fades after a few months. It really is an amorphous feeling that's deeply rooted. And yes that might make it scary, but that's the reality.
JdeBP 8y ago
> In the west The people in this very discussion pointing out differences and difficulties translating between English and French, Spanish, and (Ancient) Greek should disabuse one of the notion that this is some "Western" thing.

modzu 8y ago

whorf sapir, lets go

dkulchenko 8y ago

Russian is the same way. You can translate "I love you" linguistically, but it doesn't really make sense to say - people express it through actions rather than words. It's definitely an interesting (and rather significant) difference in Western culture that grants the 3 words such importance.

coffeemug 8y ago
What do you mean? It absolutely makes sense to say (я тебя люблю). People tend to say it less frequently because the communists attempted to eradicate display of superfluous emotions by pretending they don't exist, but if you go back to the classics the characters talk about love all the time.
- dkulchenko 8y ago
  I didn't mean it didn't make sense grammatically, just that it's not really something people use in the way they do here in the U.S. Anecdotal, but growing up surrounded by Russians and consuming Russian media daily, "я тебя люблю" as a phrase is something I've heard uttered by others maybe a dozen times, ever, compared to American culture where it's omnipresent and not uncommon to use many times a day. Movies and books do talk about love, of course, Russian poetry especially expresses love in a truly amazing way. But the article is referring to the frequent conversational use and Western importance of "I love you", and in that sense, there's a major cultural difference. Didn't know about the historical context behind it - that's an interesting point.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

In French, Je t'aime means both I love you and I like you.

gumby 8y ago
Oais, mais on dit aussi « Je t'adore »
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  I wouldn't interpret "I adore you" to be the same thing as "I love you." Though a quick Google suggests that one definition of adore is love and respect deeply. But it would just never occur to me that adore could be a synonym for love. It just doesn't strike me as such per se.
  - zdkl 8y ago
    The meaning can be close to idolatry, which furthers the notion of love-like declarations as parasitic in western semantics.
  - jandrewrogers 8y ago
    The semantic equivalent and literal equivalent of the English "I love you" are not the same in many languages. Cultural colors the semantics of nominally equivalent expressions -- don't think of it as a synonym. There are some languages, for example, that have a literal translation of "I love you" but the semantically equivalent expression, when translated to English, is "you are precious to me". It would be awkward to express the English semantics via literal translation, as it has different connotations. The meaning is more important than the literal expression.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      In what languages would you say "you are precious to me"?
      - 8y ago

ekianjo 8y ago

Poor article - of course it exists. The right answer is at the end, you say 大好き usually in Japanese, nobody uses 愛してる, its too formal and not commonly used. and usually the proper way to say it is X　のことが好きです which is difficult to translate but it's a subtle nuance referring to the substance of the person instead of just the person.

heroprotagonist 8y ago
I wonder if Google's Pixel Buds will ever accidentally trigger a romance. のことが好きです == "I like that": https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8C%E5%A5%BD%E3%81%8D%E3%81%A7%E3%81%99 https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81... This would make for a rather unlikely, but interesting, meet-cute.
- airza 8y ago
  This is just google trying to make sense of nonsense Japanese; the Xのこと is something like 'X's characteristics' (sounds really stiff, but that's how i'd concisely explain it) so のごとが好きです is like "i like 's characteristics" and is semantically meaningless.
- TuGuQuKu 8y ago
  The parent comment just left out the 大 (big/great) from the sentence example 好き - like 大好き - love (lit. "great fondness")
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    You dont need dai- to declare your love in Japanese, unless you are an immature teenager.
- keithnz 8y ago
  interesting I deleted two characters off https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81%A8%E3%81%8C%E5%A5%BD%E3%81%8D https://translate.google.com/#ja/en/%E3%81%AE%E3%81%93%E3%81... and it translates as I love you :) no idea how it would come across in japanese

gsaga 8y ago

Ask Deadpool, he knows a lot of good ways of doing that without words https://www.google.co.in/search?q=deadpool+2018+head+stab+scene&client=ms-android-acer&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjr4Kri34TdAhXJdysKHSj1Cv8Q_AUIBygC&biw=360&bih=511#imgrc=80h7Qv-OEYBnBM%3A https://www.google.co.in/search?q=deadpool+2018+head+stab+sc...

mmphosis 8y ago

qaparHa'qu'

paranoidrobot 8y ago
That's expressing the opposite of hate, however. Which isn't necessarily love. In Klingon, Love would be better expressed through actions. In this way, Klingon has the same issue as Japanese.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

gumby 8y ago

I found that after almost 25 years I'd forgotten how to be romantic in English. Despite speaking English also all that time, and watching plenty of rom-coms and the like, I just didn't know how any more.

natecavanaugh 8y ago

Something else I've recently found out from an ex, I always thought `te quiero` (in Spanish) meant "I love you", but really means something like "I feel fondness for you" (and can be used between family and close friends), but `te amo` means "I love you". First time she told me, I almost broke down in tears. It's amazing how much language affects how we relate. Edit: after learning the difference, and because she wasn't ready to say it, even though I was, and not wanting to make her uncomfortable, I invented `te quieramo` as a nice substitute. She seemed to enjoy that :)

glandium 8y ago
I've always found the subtle variations in roman languages to be interesting. At least in those I know. In spanish, you have "te quiero", from the verb "querer", which also means want. And "te amo", from the verb "amar", which has the same root as the french "aimer" or the italian "amare", used, respectively in "je t'aime" and "ti amo". I don't know about italian, but in french, "aimer" has both the meaning of "querer" and "amar" depending how you use it. Then, you have catalan, which uses "estimar" in "t'estimo", which also is used with both meanings and has the same root as the english esteem.
- klez 8y ago
  In Italian you would say "ti amo" to a significant other. When talking about a person you may want a relationship with you would say "mi piace" (I like him/her). If you're referring to a friend or a relative, you would say "ti voglio bene" (which is a different connotation of "I love you"). If you're talking about something, you would say "mi piace" (as in "mi piace il cioccolato" -> "I like chocolate") unless you really like it, in which case you can as well say "amo il cioccolato" ("I love chocolate") or "adoro il cioccolato" ("I adore(?) chocolate").
  - natecavanaugh 8y ago
    Does 'mi piace' mean something like 'I desire'?

senozhatsky 8y ago

In Belarusian language we have two different "love" words. There is one "love" [кахаю - ka-ha-you] for "I love [ka-ha-you] you / her / him", and there is another one which we use in any other case, like "I love English language". The latter cannot be used when you express your feelings for another person. Oddly enough, I don't think we use ka-ha-you in "I love myself" that often, most likely there will be the same "love" word as in "I love English language". -ss

mhd 8y ago

In the Bavarian dialect, you can't say "I love you" without switching out to proper German. We do have at least two words for peeing, though.