Japanese an extremely unromantic language?
Submitted by Zero on February 17, 2010 – 7:22 am6 Comments
The French word for love amour narrowly beats the Italian and Spanish word for love Bellissima which means “ very beautiful”. Although amour was seen as the most romantic word, Italian words dominated the listing leading Italian to be named the most romantic language.
The survey was conducted by London-based Today Translations, which polled over 320 of its linguists.
In the polls Linguists were also asked to pick the least romantic way of saying “I love you”. The winner? Japanese; “watakushi-wa anata-wo ai shimasu,” is the least romantic way of saying I love you, it was even beaten by welsh which would be said as such; “rydw i’n dy garu di”.
a survey from westsern linguist? it doesnt hold any ground. language is a very subjective thing and such survery only look like rubbish to me
The survey was done on 320 linguists from a “western country” so it’s more or less their point of view, If this survey was done In japan I am sure it would be quit different,ex, Asian countries would be topping the list.
The list holds no grounds, I will agree with that, because no matter what it will always be opinion, just like how these 320 Linguists have decided that Japanese sounds the least romantic out of the others.
That article is bullcrap. There is no other language in the world with more distinctive grammatical gender, and thats whats counts most for such a category as “romantic”. French dont even have gender-specific verb suffixes.
That might be there selling point
, anyway I will admit the article has bias ( Being French aka the Montreal Gazette).In the end it purely opinion based to what someone will prefer and to the languages someone is accustomed to.
“That might be there selling point”
I wouldnt say that. For example, in Russian, we have gender distinctive verbs and adjectives, and a couple exclusive grammatical forms. Thats not to mention a wide variety of diminutives for pretty much every grammatical category. And i can tell you that whenever i hear or read something said by a female – it actually conveys a feeling. In English if i see no names i have no idea who is a male and who is a female, its all like robot talk to me, blended neutral gender.
“watakushi-wa anata-wo ai shimasu”
This is about as much of a Japanese sentence as “me love you long time” is English. The meaning is not too far either.
Also, to poll linguists and get 320 replies, you need to have a very very low threshold for what a linguist is.