What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

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Ehesh
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What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Ehesh »

I'm trying to implement a love terms as the greek to make it more specific and not so broad as in some romance languae (English, Spanish etc):

Greek:
- Agápe
- Éros
- Philia
- Storge

I saw in Na'vi you only have yawne which means beloved and at least originally did not have love as a verb (I may be wrong though). I found this very cool. Does your language or any other languages you know (natlang or conlang) have interesting twists in verbs like this? [<3]
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Creyeditor
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Creyeditor »

:idn: Indonesian has no one-to-one translation of English 'love'

kasih: love in the sense charity or German 'Nächstenliebe'.
cinta: romantic love
sayang: to care for someone, to caress someone, used if you love someone like a child

So that's my understanding of the words, but there might be more. It also depends on the register of speech and other factors.
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Iyionaku
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Iyionaku »

Yélian has a bunch of those, although all are actually derived from the root *jv[dr]:

iava - to love romantically, nowadays the most used one
iávoda - to crave for someone, a little outdated as it was used to pejorate homosexual relationships in the early new age
iavuma - to love a place
iavalta - to love in a marriage, a little archaic but still used
iavuna - to love (family members, close friends)
iada - have forgotten the meaning of that
iádara - to love someone in a specific moment (I f*cking LOVE you, man!“)
iávera - to love (a thing or not so close friends)

Many other words are derived from this root as well, most notably the volative prefix iva- and the verb “iádama“ (to sing)

The related Caelian however, has only the verb juvdar with no specific words.
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lsd
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by lsd »

I use three different roots when I want to speak about love...
joy,emotion, and excitation...
But there are surely many others.... Many other kind of love...
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Pabappa
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Pabappa »

This is what comes up in Poswa on a search for "love":

pe beloved baby (used both literally and as a pet name for adults)
piba lust, sexual desire
putša to love, care for
sap sex, love; friction, to rub two things together
šapa to love; to bathe, wash, immerse in a fluid
wempa love, like that automatic love which comes from being helped by someone
žam to love

In Poswa the consonant /ž/ has phonosemantic associations with touch, particularly skin-to-skin contact, and is ultimately derived from a morpheme /gĭ/ which meant just that, 7000 years earlier. Therefore the commonest word is the last one in the list, which also has the simplest definition. I may end up deciding that the other words occur mostly or entirely in compounds where žam is the first element, and that if used without žam, they have evolved other meanings.

Even though žam is the shortest root, it is not the shortest verb when conjugated: "I love you" is žambabo with that root, but putšabo with a different one, which is considered in Poswa to be one letter shorter. (also, piba > pibabo).
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Shemtov
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Shemtov »

According to Wiktionary, Mandarin has a plain term for love 愛 ài, and one for romantic/sexual love 愛情 àiqíng, literally "Love-Passion".
Farsi differentiates between 'ešq "Romantic/Sexual love" and mehr "Love" (which is apparently from "Mithras")
Yiddish also makes a distinction between /ahava/ "Divine Love" (borrowed from the Hebrew word for love in general) and /libe/ "Human love, whether Platonic or Romantic"
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Iyionaku
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Iyionaku »

Shemtov wrote: 20 Nov 2017 23:56 According to Wiktionary, Mandarin has a plain term for love 愛 ài, and one for romantic/sexual love 愛情 àiqíng, literally "Love-Passion".
Farsi differentiates between 'ešq "Romantic/Sexual love" and mehr "Love" (which is apparently from "Mithras")
Yiddish also makes a distinction between /ahava/ "Divine Love" (borrowed from the Hebrew word for love in general) and /libe/ "Human love, whether Platonic or Romantic"
I think it's also worth noting that, from the same wiktionary page as far as I remember, the term 爱 is considered as belittling and cheesy to very old speakers, who would prefer 喜欢 xǐhuān, but younger speakers use 爱 exclusively when speaking to persons because it somewhat resembles the western concept of love more closely. 喜欢 nowadays is only used for actions, things and the like. (Note that I'm far from being proficient in Mandarin, so take that with a grain of salt.)
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Re: What other Languages, feature the term love this way?

Post by Alessio »

Not sure if this fits, but :ita: Italian has ti amo (plain, straight-forward I love you, romantically speaking) and ti voglio bene (I love you as a friend, lit. I want you to be well but I don't love you in the romantic sense; also what you would use, say, with your parents).

Usually when your crush says ti voglio bene you're screwed. Deep in the friendzone, that is. Even worse when some dumb people come up with horrible expressions such as ti amo di bene, which is grammatically wrong, has no meaning whatsoever, but makes it pretty clear that you're even deeper in the friendzone than with ti voglio bene.

I think this distinction extends to most languages of Italy, really. Mine (Emilian) for one has a-t vój bein vs. a t'âm, although I must confess I've never heard anybody say the latter. Unfortunately local languages are considered rude and their speakers illiterates by most people here, so you would never declare your romantic love in one of them.
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