The Language Of Love

Let’s be honest, the problem with Valentine’s Day isn’t the rampant commercialisation of love or the idea that romance should have a set date; it’s that it’s so difficult to be original. A dozen roses are clichéd but it’s rare to get a tattoo of a loved-one’s face that stands the test of time. And it’s not just presents that are problematic. Unless you’re blessed with the gift of the romantic gab, finding a way to express your undying love that hasn’t been belted out in an X Factor’s winner’s song can seem impossible.

Our ability to take a finite number of words and turn them into a potentially infinite number of sentences is one of the (many) reasons why human language is astonishing. Yet despite being able to produce sentences that have never been said before, we rely heavily on repetition with some studies estimating that nearly 50% of our utterances are fixed expressions (“I love you”), idioms (“wear your heart on your sleeve”), proverbs (“hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”) and a whole range of clichés that blur the lines (“love conquers all”). These phrases have become a fixed part of our language because they’re good at expressing particular concepts. But because they’re so good they get overused and we’re back to our initial problem of originality. Helpfully there’s a whole world of languages out there each with their own set of clichés, so this Valentine’s Day, with thanks to the wonderfully multicultural staff and students of the University of Aberdeen’s School of Psychology, why not try a different language of love?

“Kašalj, šuga i ljubav ne mogu se sakriti” (Serbian). A cough, a mange, and a love are things that cannot be hidden.

 “Upp över öronen förälskad” (Swedish). Literally translated as up over your ears, roughly synonymous with the English “head over heels”.

“Déclarer sa flame” (French). To declare one’s flame, meaning to declare one’s love.

“A-i arde călcâiele după cineva” (Romanian). To have your heels on fire for someone, again roughly synonymous with “head over heels”.

 “Rakkaudesta se hevonenkin potkii” (Finnish). Even horses kick out of love, used when someone acts silly out of love (we’ve all been there).

“Stara miłość nie rdzewieje” (Polish). Old love doesn’t get rusty, i.e., you never forget your first love.

“Flugzeuge im Bauch haben” (German). To have airplanes in your belly, similar to the English “butterflies in your stomach”.

"Sırılsıklam aşık olmak" (Turkish). To be soaking wet with love (calm down Donald).

And don’t worry, if cupid’s arrow landed in your eye instead of your heart, why not try these:

“A da papucii cuiva” (Romanian). Give someone the slippers, meaning to break-up with them. You could also try “poslat ho/ jí k vodě" – (Czech) send him/her to water.

“Avere il prosciutto sugli occhi” (Italian). Literally translated as having slices of ham over your eyes, used to mean you are so in love with someone with someone that you don’t notice they’re behaving badly.

“vor Liebeskummer vergehend” (German). To die because of love sorrow, i.e., to be lovelorn.

“Poner los cuernos” (Spanish). If you put the horns on your significant other, you’ve been unfaithful.

"Saada rukkaset" (Finnish).  To get leather mittens is to be rejected when proposing or trying to approach

Now to shoehorn in the science. The reason that articles like this crop up with relative frequency is that we tend to find idioms and proverbs in other languages quite funny. We conducted a study where we asked native and non-native speakers of English how familiar they were with British-English idioms, but also whether they thought the idioms had a literal interpretation (e.g., you can’t literally be a ray of sunshine), and whether they were semantically decomposable, that is, whether you could figure out the meaning of the idiom if you’d never heard it before (e.g., you can literally kick a bucket but you couldn’t figure out that idiomatically “kick the bucket” means “to die”  from the individual meaning of the words). We found that non-native speakers rated the idioms as less literal and less decomposable than the native speakers, but when we controlled for familiarity these differences disappeared. Our familiarity blinds us to the hilarity of our mother tongue which is why we find referring to leather mittens odd, but will quite happily go on a blind date, have the hots for someone, say those three little words, be all loved up and pop the question, tie the knot, realise love is blind and end up with our marriage on the rocks. In a nutshell, all languages are as weird as each other!

If you'd like to read more about this please see:

Nordmann, E., & Jambazova, A. A. (2017). Normative data for idiomatic expressions. Behavior research methods, 49(1), 198-215. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13428-016-0705-5 (open access)

Nordmann, E., Cleland, A. A., & Bull, R. (2014). Familiarity breeds dissent: Reliability analyses for British-English idioms on measures of familiarity, meaning, literality, and decomposability. Acta psychologica, 149, 87-95. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691814000845 ($$)