So I'm still listening to the Stars, which is my usual pattern - listen to new music obsessively until it starts to bore me or drive me mad. But one song in particular ("The first five times") got me thinking - the English language is woefully inept at describing romance. Specifically, we seem to be left with one word - "love" - to describe a number of different emotional states. Worse, there a kind of noun/verb problem in the way we use the word - love is something you do, but also something you have for someone.
But the big problem for me is that basically "love" seems to be used to describe everything that ranks higher than a platonic friendship - whether it's a more serious friendship, family, a girlfriend, whatever. As a personal example, I've described my relationship with Vicki as being in love with her for some time now, even though my own feelings for her have changed substantively (definitely not for the worse) in the 5 and a half years that we've been together. I loved her when we celebrated our first anniversary together. Now that we're getting ready to move in together as I return from school, it feels like I should have different words at hand.
I imagine I'm not breaking new ground here. But it really astounds me that for something as central to our lives, we don't really have a good grasp of how to describe love. You'd think it would be like the Inuit and snow, or something.
Of course, the argument has been made to me before that the English language is woefully inept at describing everything. An old English teacher complained that English is great at describing what things are "like", but horrible at stating what things are. To my mind, this makes those who actually do manage to express beauty in English a rare breed indeed.
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4 comments:
Gee, I don't know about this, John. I've read Bill Bryson's "The Mother Tongue" and he makes the contention that English has got some of the richest lexicons of any language, that it is the language of word-freaks, who often use redundant word-pairs expressing the same idea just for emphasis -- "Freedom and Liberty" etc.
I would tend to believe him. That is not to say that you're right in saying that English is peculiarly deficient in words describing love...but it's not an overall deficiency.
Now that I think about it, there is only arguably one word for "Love" in chinese too (although the ability to form compound words to color the meaning of "love" is far greater).
Just because "love" is a terribly defined, oft-misused word doesn't mean there aren't other words to describe it. A lot of media tends to focus obsessively on "love", and a lot of people tend to want to think they have that prematurely.
Not everything needs to be summarized in a single word, either.
From answers.com 'love' entry:
SYNONYMS love, affection, devotion, fondness, infatuation. These nouns denote feelings of warm personal attachment or strong attraction to another person. Love is the most intense: marrying for love. Affection is a less ardent and more unvarying feeling of tender regard: parental affection. Devotion is earnest, affectionate dedication and implies selflessness: teachers admired for their devotion to children. Fondness is strong liking or affection: a fondness for small animals. Infatuation is foolish or extravagant attraction, often of short duration: lovers blinded to their differences by their mutual infatuation.
It is like the Inuit and snow
It's perfectly cromulent to create new words if you need to. Although people may not grok them at first, if they fill a need your neologism may well metasize.
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