Love in Times of Multilinguialism!

It is often said that Love cannot be expressed appropriately with words. There are feelings that our languages cannot fully explain. However, we need words to communicate and to express our feelings towards our loved ones. And those loving words come in a Language.

It is difficult to think about a culture of any part of the world that has not dedicated any song, any composition or any poem to Love. Words of any language have been magically combined to express what Love is. Poetry is perhaps the best expression of this word play. It is normal to see couples where at least one of them writes poems to the other. If they do not have patience to compose poems, there are thousands of nice poems available from every corner of the world ready to be used to show our sweetest thoughts. Lovers owe much to writers like William Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe and Ella Wheeler Wilcox, who wrote poems in English. In other languages we have Victor Hugo, René François Sully Prudhomme and Molière (French), Pablo Neruda, Ruben Darío and Gabriela Mistral (Spanish), Gabriele D’annunzio (Italian),  Alexander Pushkin (Russian and French), Mikhail Lermontov (Russian), Khalil Gibran (Arabic), Hermann Hesse (German), Jalal ud-Din Rumi (Who wrote in Persian, Arabic and Turkish) and Hafez (Persian).

Most people think about the poems written by their favourite authors, but very few people think about our forgotten heroes: The translators, who do their best to communicate the meaning of the poem to the source language in order to allow speakers of the target language to enjoy that work.

A foreign language can also be an aphrodisiac. The music produced by foreign accents and the sensual cadences, without mention anything about the curiosity that produces, may result in a romantic encounter.     

In 2015, Babbel, an e-learning application to learn languages, conducted a research among its students about languages, accents and Love.  Approximately 14,000 students participated and 34% answered that they consider French as the sexiest language, 24.4% voted for Italian and 15.8% voted for Spanish. About accents, 37.4% considered French as the sexiest foreign accent in any language, 19% voted for Italian and 13.3% voted for English (No difference between American or British accent). Interestingly, when we go to the results obtained in the French page (French Students learning foreign languages with this app), they answered that they consider Italian as the sexiest language with 44.8%, then 25.2% voted for English and 20% voted for Spanish. For French, English is the sexiest accent with 38.8%, and then comes Italian with 27.1% and Spanish with 16.9% of the votes. 90.5% of the participants said that they would learn another language for Love. Results can be read here. Some dating applications have also made their own research, and although they do not provide many details about how did they do the research, what seems to repeat in most of them is that French and Italian Accents tend to be considered the sexiest in many parts of the world, and that those languages tend to be associated with a Language of Love. English and Spanish are not always the favourite ones, but they make their way to the top ten. When we talk about those multinational languages where multiple accents can be recognized, in terms of romance and love affairs, most of researches state that among English Native speakers, South Eastern English accents and Southern Irish accents are considered as the sexiest ones. If we talk about Spanish, Argentinean is among the most romantic accents, and with French, no questions about the favouritism that non native people show toward the accents from France. 

From the topic of accents, there is another one related with foreign languages in dating. We write about the use of romantic expressions in foreign languages. I have lived in different places, and I met different couples who from time to time they use foreign idioms to address their beloved. Most of the time, and in line with the previous point of the accents, those expressions come usually from languages such as French, Italian and English. It is common to listen to native speakers of English and Spanish using phrases such as: “Amore Mio!” “Je t’adore!”, “Mon amour!”, “Mon chéri!”, “Cara mia!”, “bello!”, and Spanish native speakers using words like: “Baby!", “Sweetheart!”, “Honey!”  

I did not find many researches about the use of foreign expressions when we date. I have my own theory about this. Personally I think that this has to do with the need that couples have to create their own code to communicate. On the other hand, the words of other languages sound exotic and funny. A particular way of making a loving relationship less monotonous!

We cannot fail to mention the case of relationships with someone who does not speak the same first language. In this time, when more and more people are living and working abroad, and it is easier to participate in international conferences and gatherings, more people are finding life partners who have a different native language. Depending on how multilingual is the couple and where do they live, they may decide to communicate in the language of one or both partners or they may chose to speak in a neutral language. Different pages speak about good things and not that good of such relationships, but there is no discussion that an international couple has much to learn from their partners, including their language, and that they need to think very well what are they going to say as idioms may not have the same meaning in both cultures.

What I wrote in this essay is based in my own experience. There are hundreds of essays about Love and Languages, written and available in the Internet and in printed texts. But this topic gets a different meaning when I realize that those points described here are part of my own life. I Love Languages, but when those Languages are part of my Love stories, I feel that my perception of those same languages change. Today, I have a very special regard for those languages I used in my romances.

I love poems, but it’s not the same to read one of the poems written by any author, mentioned or not in this article, than to be myself who write this poem to my beloved woman. Write a poem in another language that is not my native language, makes the words acquire another dimension.  It is as if that language reveals its real secrets to be used to express what the heart feels.  

I said “I love You” in different languages and in different languages I have heard the most beautiful expressions of Love. Which Languages? The Languages in which I have received the sweetest signs of affection are Spanish, Italian, English and Persian

Now, I leave some funny and uncommon phrases of Love as they are said in different languages. Happy Valentine’s Day to all my Readers!!! Bonne Saint Valentin à tous mes lecteurs!

·         Musu batean jakingo duzu isildu dudan guztia (Basque). - In a kiss, you will know everything that I did not say

·         Qu’est-ce que tu manges pour être très beau? (French) – What are you eating to be so beautiful ?

·         Om du svor att bli min kvinna, skulle jag ge upp svordomar för resten av mitt liv (Swedish) – If you promised to be my woman, I would give up swearing for the rest of my life

·         Ho saziato la mia sete alla fontana dei tuoi baci. (Italian) - I quenched my thirst at the fountain of your kisses.

·         Jigareto bokhoram (Persian)  جگر تو بخورم

(This phrase literally means: “I’ll eat your liver”) I Love you so much

·         Tu eres mi media Naranja  (Spanish) – (Literally means “You are my half orange”) You are my soul mate

·         Cwtch (Welsh)- Cuddle * 

*(this word has a very complex meaning. Not any hug is a Cwtch and it is not limited to a huge. Read more here