Foreign Language Range of Love

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello.

Hi, who is this?

This is Mariana from Argentina.

Hello, Mariana.

From Argentina. From where in Argentina?

In Buenos Aires.

Oh, excellent. Well, what are you calling us about today, Mariana?

Well, I’m calling about the word love.

L-O-V-E?

Yes. So, my question is this.

When I lived in the States, for me it was strange that, you know, when people talked about friendship to an acquaintance and you feel a positive feeling about that person, the only word that was used was love. And the fact is, in Spanish, we have many words for like different degrees of love. For example, for somebody you just met, like a slight acquaintance, you can say lo estimo, which is sort of a, I don’t know, a mellow kind of love.

And then you have a stronger, like, lo aprecio, which is, you know, a little bit stronger than estimar.

And then you have, for a friend, you have lo quiero, which is a higher degree of love.

And then for, like, your partner or your kids or your parents, you have te amo, which is I love you.

So you have, like, four or five different ways of saying love instead of only one.

And, you know, I felt like an Eskimo trying to describe snow.

You make a good point because in English we use love in so many different situations.

You know, I love my children. I love microwave frozen lasagna.

But that was what I was thinking of when you said lo estimo and lo aprecio, is that they’re roughly equivalent to the English words esteem and appreciate, but they’re not quite the same.

The nuance is a little different.

Martha, I think that I would say I esteem you as a colleague, but I love you as a friend, right?

Yeah.

And the esteem has that professional removal.

You would never really use that for even a friend or a family member.

How about an acquaintance?

And you really enjoy their company, but you don’t love them.

That’s a really good question.

I think that we’re a country of overstating the case.

We tend to love adjectives, and we use all the extreme and most powerful adjectives that we can to say something.

I would probably say, she’s great. She’s awesome. She’s fantastic. She’s fabulous.

But you’re not describing how you feel about her.

I know.

You’re just describing her.

Right.

That’s exactly right.

I think we tend to be a little more removed.

It’s kind of related to that personal space, isn’t it?

We talk about our feelings about the object.

We don’t talk about the object.

Because when you talk about appreciation, isn’t that about an object and not a person?

Well, it could be about a person.

But I think what you’re pointing out is that in Spanish, maybe there are more gradations, almost like, I don’t know, like a scale or something.

We don’t have that quite so well defined in English.

I think we have it, but it’s hard to match the Argentinian Spanish scale to the North American English scale.

You could do a spectrum of words in English, and I would put them something like respect, esteem, appreciate, to treasure, cherish, like, adore, love.

And I think there’s a kind of an increasing level of love there.

And I don’t know.

Actually, I feel very uncomfortable saying to a friend, I love you.

I never do.

Oh, really?

Oh, no.

What do you say?

Not in English.

Not in English?

What do you say in English?

Nothing.

I make them see that I love them, but I never say it.

Because I don’t feel comfortable using the word love for a friend.

I think you’re very American in that regard.

You’ve picked up that habit about it.

North American.

North American.

You know, I do tell certain people in my world that I love them, but it’s a very small group of people.

Yeah, but you would say te amo to even fewer.

That’s what I’m saying.

Yeah, that’s true.

And I use, I love you for me is te amo.

You said something really nice, Mariana, and I think this is true in Argentina as much as it is in the United States, which is we express our love so often through our actions that sometimes the words aren’t necessary.

That’s right.

How we treat the other person, how we show respect for them and do things for them, right?

Right.

Yeah, well, Mariana, thank you for a very interesting call about nuance in language.

Thank you.

We loved having you on the show.

We cherish this call.

We appreciate the time you’ve spent with us.

We adore the fact that you called.

Okay.

Ciao.

Ciao.

Ciao.

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