"LIKE" VS "LOVE" : A CHANGE OF HEART

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I readily criticize the French language for its lack of two separate verbs for “like” and “love.” The French verb “aimer” ends up meaning both, depending on which (if any) adverbs modify it. If you LOVE someone, it is the verb on its own: “Je t’aime.” Now, this I agree with. I personally believe that love is strongest without adjectives, adverbs, or qualifiers of any sort. Love is strongest in its purest form. In French, if you LIKE someone, you must use a certain adverb, such as “bien,” to express it. How could it be, I wondered, that in what we consider to the “the language of love,” they do not have a word that ONLY means love?! (They also do not have a separate WORD for “house” and “home,” while we are picking on them.)

Lately, I have been examining my own language a lot. I appreciate the fact that I can quite easily distinguish - through VERB and not ADJECTIVE choice - whether I like or love someone. However, I have also been examining usage patterns, tendencies, and shifts, especially among the younger generation(s) of Americans, myself admittedly included. I realized that though we are able to make this powerful distinction, we do not respect the words’ true meanings to begin with. We have an unfortunate tendency to claim that we “love” everything and everyone - “I love that shirt!” “I love that movie.” “She’s crazy - I love her!” With all those “loves” floating around, it falls upon tone, facial expression, and circumstance to convey the distinction of saying it out of habit and saying it to sincerely mean it, especially in a romantic context. Relying on such subtleties is dangerous and never a good thing - at least the French still use adverbs, which are actual, concrete words! The French avoid adding further ambiguity to the matter by throwing around the verb “adorer” rather than using “aimer.”

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Comments

[David]

Yeah, I'm going to have to go ahead and disagree with you on that...
Really? You must have fallen to the dark side in France to have missed the painfully common practice of the French (particularly the men) who regularly disrespect the word aimer. I fully agree with the presumption and the realization that the purity of the language and the singular use of the word aimer conveys the true nature of the concept of LOVE. I do, however, take particular exception in the whole of the second paragraph. I can say, without qualm or misqualification of the emotion, that I love many things. Having stated this, I concede that it is often overused by an increasingly number of people - Thank you, Paris. :) I was ready to buy the whole argument when you brought up house and home... For all of its ambiguity, perhaps it can be seen as a nature of the culture that it is impossible for the French to separate the concept of house - the physical structure in which a family resides - and home - the place that breeds a sense of safety, love (interesting that it applies here), and family. One question is to be raised regarding the initial adoption of these words, or perhaps the way in which they have morphed usage. After all, the French language can, without argument, be recognized as an older language. Perhaps it is for this that they need only a single, pure word to convey love. After all, maybe it isn't that their short coming isn't having a word for love, but it is that they just don't have a need to designate words that express a less resolute emotion. Is it that "like" just isn't significant enough - isn't a pure enough emotion - to justify the addition of an discrete word to a language that, in my opinion, is more centered on the subjective expression of the world than English? In this, we can see that for an anglophone, it is important to establish EXACTLY to what level something is experienced. But for the French, the degree to which you love someone - or something - does not change the fact that you love them. If like is a diluted form of love, being the innate desire for something, then wouldn't it be more appropriate for the French to use just a single word for both, and even all the degrees that separate the two? Indeed, il n'y a qu'un pas entre la haine et l'attirance. Okay, so in summary, I disagree, but in fact reinforce your point-of-view/opinion, though I'm not sure if you clearly stated if your change of heart was solid. I should make my own blog from my comments on yours.