Does "I Love You" Have a Different Impact on You in Another Language?

Hey Everyone,

This is going to be one of those threads in which the title is going to be interpreted one way -- I think most anyone would say, "Of course 'I love you' is just as meaningful in any language!" But does it "feel" any different to you if you say it, or if someone says it TO YOU in another language?

I've written about this before, so my apologies to anyone who may have read my old thread and might see this as repetitious.

As God brings more people of different backgrounds into my life, this is something I contemplate all the more. And I'm not just talking about "I love you" -- it can be ANY words of affirmation or affection, whether between friends, romantic partners, family members, co-workers, etc.

For example, if your parents speak a native language other than English, does it or would it mean the same if they tell you they're proud of you, or that you're a good son/daughter in their own language vs. if they said it in English? Or if your native language isn't English, does it mean the same to hear kind words in English as it does your own language?

The reason I ask is because I find a very notable difference when someone say something to me in another language vs. in English, though I'm guessing it's because I'm such an emotionally-based person. I don't speak anything other than English, so all I know are a few words and phrases I've tried to learn/memorize in order to communicate with people I care about. It's not that I don't care about other languages, it's just not something that comes naturally to me and I have many other studies/activities that are taking up my time, so I'm doing the best I can.

However, if someone says, "I love you" or "You mean a lot to me", etc., or other words of affirmation to me in another language, I've found that I have to do not just one, but two translations in order to try to understand -- first, my brain has to translate the sounds (something unfamiliar) into English (something familiar,) and then my heart has to translate the association I have with a feeling to what was said.

Being a very word-based person, I have strong feelings/emotional ties to even simple words like "Please" (slight vulnerability) and "Thank you" (gratitude.) I am well aware and frustrated by the limitations of words though, because I don't know if I'm even able to explain this topic adequately in words.

I have several family members and friends who often end their conversation with, "(I) Love you," and if it's not in English, my brain and heart are trying to do the "translations" as quickly as possible, but something always feels off. I guess it's because my heart is permanently etched with an automatic reaction to hearing one set of sounds (responding with the associated emotion,) but has no history or association to other sets of sounds -- even if, by definition, they mean the exact same thing.

Does this ever change? Do you ever feel the same way in reaction to hearing something differently than what you are used to hearing?

All are welcome to answer, but I am especially interested in hearing from those who have a spouse, partner, friends, family, etc., who speak other languages to you.

* What has your experience been? Did you grow up with other languages, and do they feel as natural to you as English? Or if you have a different first language than English, does someone saying "I love you," or other words of affection "feel" the same in English as when said in your native tongue?

* How do you feel when YOU say "I love you" or affirming words back to someone in a language you're not as familiar with? Does have the same emotional weight and impact?

* If you are a more logical person, maybe you don't associate feelings with words as much as others might. Does hearing "I love you," etc. have the same effect on you no matter what language it's said in, because you logically know what the words mean and don't need an emotion to go with it?

I'd really like to know if anyone else experiences this and if it has changed over time (become more or less comfortable, etc.)

And as I think about it, what about the flip side of this?

If someone said, "I hate you," yelled at you or chewed you out in another language (I'm thinking especially of spouses,) would it still affect you the same way?

I'm looking forward to the discussion!

Not sure Im following this one seoul
Have you had ...a lot of lovers? Is this anything to do with the 5 love langauges.

Mostly people who are non verbal will just come up and hug me. Its usually the little people who do that.
As for ESOL speakers its the same, they can use body language to convey the meaning. Or food.

There has always been a langauge barrier between my mum and me though I dont really think about it that much. She has her secret code chicken scratchings and I have mine lol

Jesus didnt go round saying 'I love you' all the time. He just laid hands on people and healed them. Or maybe 'Get up and walk'.

Theres also this song, which I have learned to sing, but if you cant sing, you can play guitar.

there's a word in Spanish
I don't understand
But I heard it in a film one time
spoken by the leading man
He said it with devotion
he sounded so sincere
And the word he spoke in Spanish
Brought the female lead to tears

To answer your questions, No, and No, but you are definitely right when you said that you're not understanding this topic, lol. But that's ok. I would imagine this thread won't resonate with many people.

Let me give some examples.

I have someone in my family whose mother is visiting and doesn't speak English. I try to say a few basic things to her in her own language (hence my examples of "Please" and "Thank You,") in her own language, but they don't "feel" the same.

When I say these words in English, I have an emotional attachment to them (a slight vulnerability when I say please, and a feeling of gratitude when I say thank you.) However, when I say them in another language, I don't get those same feelings. I don't have the same emotional ties with the words/sounds from another language, even if they mean the same thing as the English words.

And so I wonder if it's the same with words like "I love you." If my family member's mother says, "I love you" to them in their native language, does it have a different "feeling" than if they were to say it in English?

I also wonder what it's like for couples with language differences. I've known several people who married someone who spoke a different language -- in some cases, they barely knew any common words together in the same language -- and so I wonder how couples adjust to things like that.

If you're used to hearing, "I love you" from someone in English, whether it's a friend, family member, etc., does it feel any different if someone now says it to you in another language?

For me, it does, as I have a friends (NOT lovers, as you were assuming) with whom we end the conversation, "Love you," and sometimes they do so in their own languages, and when this happens, I've realized that it carries a different emotional weight for me when it's not in English (my own native tongue.)

I was just wondering if anyone else has experienced this as well.

(You had to know this one was coming...)


Je t'aime
Te amo
Ya ti-bya lyu blyu
Ani o hev ot cha
I love you

The sounds are all as different
As the lands from which they came
And though the words are all unique
Our hearts are still the same

Love in any language
Straight from the heart
Pulls us all together
Never apart

And once we learn to speak it
All the world will hear
Love in any language
Fluently spoken here

Try joining a church sign team, if any still do that, and learning the lyrics to a song in sign language. You get a lot of the same dissociative effect.

The first five lines of this song are EXACTLY what I'm trying to say.

For anyone who isn't understanding the point of the thread... Read these first five lines as best as you can. ALL of them mean, "I love you."

How do you feel and what do you associate with each phrase? Does it mean something to you? Does it stir your emotions or feelings? Why or why not?

And if your native language is English, when you read the 5th line, "I LOVE YOU," does it mean something different to you than all the other phrases? Whether it was said to you by a romantic partner or a parent or someone you love?

THIS is what I'm getting at.

If you read them again, you already KNOW that each phrase listed, though unfamiliar, means "I love you." But do they all feel the same to you and elicit the same reaction?

Why or why not, when you KNOW what it means? And if "I love you" was the only one that "spoke" to you, does that mean if you or someone else said, "I love you" in a language other than your own, it wouldn't mean as much?

Why or why not?

You may logically and intellectually know that certain letters might say "I love you."

But does it feel the same when said in a way that's unfamiliar to you?

For me it depends a lot more on who says it than how they say it, no matter what language they use.

If a kid at work criticizes me it means nothing. If my Uncle Fred criticizes me it means a lot. Kids don't know what they're talking about, but what Uncle Fred thinks means a lot to me. If he said it in another language, if I understood that language, it would have exactly the same meaning to me because it would have the same criticism from the same person.

If Uncle Fred and the kid at work both used a different language, the kid's criticism wouldn't mean anything there either.

People dont go really go round saying I love you to me all the time.
Often they say it in flowers or hug
In chinese its the same, though its really just my mum who is not one for showing affection

I would often sign of letters with 'lots of love" though sometimes I would write 'arohanui' which means the same in Maori. Aroha and agape are similar in concept as they convey kindness and compassion, its more unconditional love

Dont know about couples as this is a singles forum they might get jealous that ppl are saying I love you to other people. But then theres now the whole 'love is love' thing

God is love to me. He said to Jesus so that everyone can hear 'This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Hear ye him'
I think thats the highest praise a Father can give a son
Jesus would affirm lost women by calling them 'daughter'

Theres also sign language though a lot of deaf try to lip read.

I think if you've been given the gift of tongues, use it for God. He can hear in any language and its to magnify Him even if you dont know what you are saying. But not everyone who has this gift will use it. and some dont even know they have it or even ask for it.

written languages and spoken language can be different because spoken langauge uses tones to convey meaning as well
I think if you have ears to hear you will receive it otherwise it may be just 'gibberish' to you or, as the mockers said in acts 'they just drunk' . Because love is something that comes from the heart often in emoji speak we just use the symbol.

it would be a bit useless for me to write here in chinese cos only those whove learned in chinese could read it BUT they could speak a different dialect and still read the same thing in Chinese. If I wrote it in pinyin english speakers would be able to hear it, but it would only convey the sounds not the meaning, since english is a phonetic based lanaguage writing system. Not character based as Chinese is.

Does that make sense.

Human communication, in all forms, fascinates me.

One of my favorite stories from the Bible is the Tower of Babel -- not because people disobeyed, but because it gives us a glimpse of just how powerful God really is -- I mean, Poof!!! In one night, He created umpteen different languages as if it were nothing.

A quick Google search says there are around 7,100 languages, and even if a human being dedicates their entire life to language learning, how many could he or she really become fluent in within their lifetime? Maybe 10 or even 20 at most? Certainly only a drop in the bucket compared to what God made literally overnight.

And yet, I'm always intrigued that God still left us some universal clues that are devoid of written or spoken language, such as the body language and emotion.

If your Uncle Fred was criticizing you in a peaceful way, you'd probably think he was saying something positive.

And if he said something complimentary towards you but in a very angry way, you'd probably assume he was criticizing.

These are the kinds of thing that I find so mesmerizing, along with how and why we attach so much meaning to words, even when we get the meaning of the words wrong.

I like what you said about conveying only sounds and not meaning.

I guess this is the heart of what I'm trying to get at in my post -- the way we all learn to develop meaning to sounds (language,) and how or if new and different sounds can become just as meaningful to us.

Sorry if it all seems unclear... I'm thinking maybe Cinder will come along and express everything I'm trying to say, only much better an in 1/4 of the words. She has a way of doing that.

Even though I consider myself very word-based, I often find myself all-too limited by the very characteristic that I see as integral to who I am.

You need to connect word with meaning, which is why dictionaries are helpful in building up vocabulary. Having the vocab is so important.

I could write so much about language acquistion and the way its taught (or not taught) . I worked in schools where languages were immersion (as we who are native born are immersed - or baptised as is in English) or you had to learn it the hard way or simply by ear.

I'm learning by ear lot and have learned to be a good mimic, but the meaning can be lost. Maori is often taught that way, you can hear it and say it and pronounce it all perfect but often children dont get the meaning behind it. Id be learning all these Maori songs in school but have NO clue what I was singing about until I read it and translated it into english. And this was years later. lol

Is is a bit overwhelming and also I had the big problem growing up that people just didnt believe I could understand them because I didnt LOOK english i.e white, anglo saxon and people would treat me like a dummy but ironically English became my best subject that I majored in it.

I didnt go all the way to England though unlike my sister who has acquired the posh tones of Londoners but yea its interesting ppl expect me to know Chinese and read it fluently and I have to disapoint them all the time and go NO I am not from China, never been there and didnt learn Chinese in school. The. people would praise me all the time how good my english was when I'd really done nothing to deserve it just by virtue of being born here where the main language is English.

Im thankful the Bible HAs been translated into as many lanaguges as God had created cos Im not Hebrew! Or Greek! This week Ive been cataloguing church library books and someone had donated an English/Arabic Holy Bible. And its only in recent times that full Maori translations have become available.

Been watching too much Korean drama that time, so I said my first I love you “Saranghe” in Korean language. And I don’t say that much because I am quite a logical person.

“Saranghe” does not really sound endearing in my opinion. The Filipino version “mahal kita” is still my favorite but “i love you” is more commonly used because it is universal since we have so many local languages or dialects.

Trivia:
Did you know that “mahal” also means expensive? I don’t understand why they used the word mahal for love. Maybe because love is priceless? Or having a relationship is expensive? 😅😅😂

I will make one comment:

Although the language something is spoken in doesn't matter too much to me, there is one word I do consider special... Or I will one day. It is a word that means "beloved." I have never heard anyone use it, although the language it is part of is not exactly archaic or arcane.

I will never use this word for anything or anyone else except my wife, and I will never speak it if anybody else is around. It will be my private word for her alone.

But this is a meaning I personally and intentionally impart to the word. That's deliberate, not at all the same as what seoulsearch is talking about.

How about when you say nothing at all?

It's amazing how you can speak right to my heart
Without saying a word, you can light up the dark
Try as I may I can never explain
What I hear when you don't say a thing .......Ronan Keating

hi sweetie

in the (very long) past, i studied two other languages long enough, and learned them well enough to dream in them. at that point, when you're not doing rapid translations in your head, it just sorta all blends together.

i'm not a logical person. i refer to myself as an emotional responder. i feel the feelings first, and later can think about things logically. so as to your question about being chewed out in a language i don't know (as my beloved German auntie did on occasion), i felt it! i knew she was displeased and although i may have had a general idea what the trouble was, i didn't know what she was saying particularly. it still stung! (although she has gone Home, she's still my favorite aunt... maybe that's why it stung?)

that's my experience, for what it's worth.

my husband says i love you by emptying the dishwasher, or pulling the covers up over my shoulder in the night because he knows i get cold.

many ways to express the emotion.

Interesting topic, Kim. Over here the phrase “I love you” is divided into different ways of expressing your love and affection. The translation of “I love you” is “jeg elsker deg”. This phrase isn’t that common in Norwegian because its connotations are pointing at love in a mighty affectionate manner. It’s more common to say “jeg er glad i deg”, which means “I love you” like in the English speaking world. Translated though, it says “I’m happy with you”, which sounds more like something you would say to your spouse after 20 years of marriage.

Anyways, in Norwegian the context of what you say doesn’t really make an influence on your phrases or idioms, so when context will show how to interpret “I love you”, this isn’t necessarily the case in Norwegian and choosing the correct words becomes more important.

The Bible translation community has adopted the terminology of putting the Bible into someone's "heart language" and I think that's relevant to this discussion because I think our emotional connections form to a specific set of words and sounds. A person's heart language doesn't have to exactly correspond to what we think of as a language. I remember friends overseas saying that since their entire christian experience had been in English that reading the Bible in English felt more natural and they understood the theological terms better than reading it in their "native" language and also a few experiences where something being or not being in English did affect the impact of what was said.

But like any other language, I think a person's heart language could add some new vocabulary as life goes on and other relationships come into the picture. So supposing I marry a foreigner who's heart language is something other than English; I think I can reasonably expect to develop an emotional connection to I love you in his language, but that is mainly going to come through the context of our relationship and as he demonstrates it that foreign phrase will become filled with meaning that connects with my heart. And that's my two cents on the subject for whatever it's worth.