"The big picture: English heavily relies on the "L" word to talk about all manner of deep connection - which could say something about our culture's comfort with big feelings. "It's not necessarily a bad thing," says Ben Kramer, a linguist and course designer at Duolingo. "There's also something beautiful" about viewing feelings for a relative on the same level as those for a romantic partner, he says."
"In Japanese, the phrase koi no yokan means the premonition of love - the idea that you will be in love with the person in the future. No, that's not the same as "love at first sight," Kramer tells Axios. The Japanese have another word for that - "hitomebore," which is notable, Kramer says, because until recently they used a single word for both blue and green."
"In Arabic, ya'aburnee means "you bury me." In other words, you love someone so much that you need them to outlive you because you can't go on without them. There are words in Arabic for different levels of affection, but for expressing love, that is the "most pure" way, Kramer says. In American Sign Language, there are also multiple ways to express that you love someone. The same is true for Norwegian(elske is the most intense) and Spanish ( te amo vs. te quiero)."
English commonly uses a single word for many forms of deep connection, while many other languages contain specific, distinct terms for nuanced affections. Japanese distinguishes a premonition of future love (koi no yokan) from love at first sight (hitomebore). Arabic offers ya'aburnee to convey a desire for a loved one to outlive the speaker. Other languages and systems—American Sign Language, Norwegian, Spanish, Welsh, German, Korean, Yiddish, and French—provide words for longing, departure pain, gradual attachment, destiny, and affectionate nicknames that capture varied emotional subtleties.
Read at Axios
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]