See also the Japanese language, which uses suki desu to denote an affection for (much like te quiero), koi as a description of love in a detached sense, and ai shiteiru as an expression of deep, baby-makin’, settlin’-down love (and from which we also get ren’ai, a description of “romantic love”).

and by enfatuation I mean REALLY DEEPLY held infatuation… :/ where’s the spell check…

‘know what you mean. This is just one of several reasons why I like german (which would translate to spanish, in your case) more than english: The possibility to differentiate.

Though I have to admit that this is a lot whole easier in your mother tongue, anyway.

And, Dante, blame us [germans] for what? Differences? Or this damn dark episode in our history, which actually has nothing at all to do with love (whatever that means…)? You could blame the cojones, as well…

I believe that the spanish language has it’s advantage there, certainly, and the fact that we have those differences helps a lot. When the husband asked me to drop the then other boyfriend -yes, yes, I was dating two people, I liked to have choices- I asked him why, he said “te quiero” and I said that is how i felt about my cat. So then he said “te amo”. Extra boyfriend was dropped like a pound of lead and happiness ensued. It helps to have the different words, to say the least.

So do the distinct meanings help with understanding as well as communicating?

From what the different language speakers are saying it sounds as if everyone knows the difference between querer and amar and there is little room for confusion between the two or the intent of the person speaking.

Whereas in english with just one word being responsible for so many different levels of feeling there is a lot of room for misinterpretation.

english = annoyed arguments
romantic languages = blissful communication

But is the communication problem because there is only one word to define a spectrum or is it because of something else?

I’m 100% with Sergio on this one, though Chrispian has a point, ( sorry to hear about your wife, may she get better.)
But we’re talking about language here. True in English you could say ‘I like you’, but you could also be talking to a gold fish.
Now you can’t say ‘I love you’ to a gold fish’. (What’s there to love? A 2 month memory span?) Hell, you could even say ‘You rock my world.’ but we aren’t in the fucking 80’s (or where ever the fucking saying came from.) Now in portugues you can say ‘Estou afim de voce.’, ‘Gosto de voce.’ and then the one that packs a punch, ‘Te amo’. (You could also say ‘Vamos fica?’, which basically means you want a quickie. ….But that’s only if your a Paulistano.)So there you go, the english speakers who are forced to either bottle up there emmotions (Ahhhh! Now the Brithish make sense!) or telling a girl he wants to fill her with baby’s when he probably just wants the same thing, but without the babies. While us Latinos can expresse ourselve no matter what level our emmotions are.

In the end we all blame Crazy King George for butchering the english language, rebuilding it, and all-in-all giving us dislexic’s a hard time. (F-you Mr. George, that damn ‘I love you’ has gotten me into so much trouble!)

let’s face it; residents of the US use phrases like “get er done”. we are ignoramuses when it comes to language or conveying clear and concise … even logical sentences.

the simple phrase “I love you” is (speaking for some the male population - i hate stereotyping) a blatant attempt to confuse the female gender (for fornication purposes).

the problem is not a lack of words or phrases to choose from (in my opinion), it is a lack of intellignece. if you respond with “where’s the spell check” to me by God…

maria: what weighs more, a pound of lead or a pound of feathers? just kidding, don’t hate me… i love ellipsis…

I think that reserving “I love you” for very special situations encourages english-speakers to express mild affection in other ways, but it also back-lashes and makes verbal communication difficult. People learn to fear saying “I love you” because they don’t want their SO to get freaked out, or they fear being rejected.

“I like you” is a pretty poor substitute. I mean, I /like/ sushi, but I’m not going to go out on a date with an avacado roll. “I care about you” is pretty cheap-sounding, and “that was fun - I’ll call you” sounds ingenuine.

Okay, I give up . . . english sucks. I’m going to study more Japanese.

“…Because everybody knows how to love, but just a few know how to….errr… love?”
Thats the reason why José José doesn’t sing in english it sucks…

English is a most practical monosylabic language good enough for writing rap songs, but there’s no poetry in it. It’s like C++ and CSS.

Sergio, you’re a fucking genius.

Aah, Sergio, so you finally wrote about this!

I have to agree, for me it was/is frustrating that in english there is only “I love you”; there is no in between. It was so overused by an ex (obviously the cheating bastard didn’t mean it at all) that I grew accostumed to it. It no longer has a meaning…it’s just three words.

That’s why i prefer to use spanish with my current BF. Even though I am still very tempted to tell him “Ti voglio bene” and confuse him with my Italian hee hee…now thanks to Daineko i’ll have a few more to confuse him with ;-P

Daineko: thanks for letting us know the japanese words!!

Do you think that the language you speak limits the way you think?
Sergio did an amazing job picking up one example where spanish has specific words to define levels of one emotion, whereas English doesn’t. English speakers obviously understand the concept and can use english to describe that concept. But do you ever think about that? If you asked the querer vs amar question to most spanish speakers you’d probably get very similar answers… (thanx JJ), I don’t think you would if you asked several english speakers. I think the same would apply across other languages… I’m sure you can find concepts in German and Portugese that don’t have equivalents in spanish. (heck, 3 articles? :) examples anybody?

I so preferred pre-girlfriend entries when you were all bitter and angry, they fucking rocked the dance floor that is your blog. Can’t you pretend to be bitter and a tad angry, just for us, so we can once again feel the bass?

Gotta say I totally agree with ya, and it goes even futher when you think of how often you hear “Me alegro de verte” in latin countries versus mainly english ones…

Very true. I never thought of it that way. Funny you should also mention Chomsky’s eskimos: I believe the urban legends goes that they have 100 words for “snow.”

English’s best attempt at ramping up to true love thus far has been to double up on the word “like.”

Overheard in a high school cafeteria: “Do you like her? Or do you *like her* like her?”

I seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee what you meaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. I only speak English so far lol, but I thoroughly enjoy analyzing language as best I can. I was looking around on wikipedia once and I came accross the sapir-whorf hypothesis. It’s basically a huge article on how your language can limit the way you think. Love is a pretty inadequate word… I mean there’s not even a different word for family type of love in English… I basically ended up writing a paper to tell a girl I loved her. I wrote a lot about how the word love is inadequate and it’s ok to use one word to describe a fairly simple emotion, but it’s stupid to try and use one word to envelope and cover generally a set of very complicated emotions.

Regarding our cunnilingual abilities, and admitting our limited linguistic repertoire, perhaps we just have to work harder?

Personally, I don’t mind the extra, shall we say, “challenge”.

Parents and children also say “te quiero” to one another, which might tarnish the reputation of “querer” being purely seen as a physical type of love. And what about the love I have of Mexico? It’s not “lo quiero” but I’d hesitate to say “lo amo” — it’s more like “lo me gusta mucho” (the “like” question once again, raised to a higher level). Closer to the concept of “agape” (which I’m surprised nobody has mentioned, you horny bastards).

It’s possible that none of our languages can sustain the shades of types of love. Perhaps this is more of a reflection of our cultural psyches, and their difficulty with the concept of love, than languages themselves.

As a current high school student, I know what you mean. In my dialect, we refer to it as “like like.”- not “like him like him” or “like her like her,” just “like like him” or “like like her.” I find the redundance funny, but so far we’ve not found a more eloquent way to say it.