The question.
Three words carry more weight than almost any others in a relationship. “I love you.” For people who fall for someone who grew up speaking a different language, those words raise a quiet question. If you say them in a language you learned at school or at work, do they mean as much? And when your partner says them to you in your language, or theirs, do they land the same way?
This is not a small worry for couples who meet across borders. Many of them build their relationship in a shared second language, often English, that is the first language of neither person. Others mix languages, switching between them through the day. This article asks what research says: does love lose something when you express it in a language that is not your first?
Where the words feel strongest.
One of the largest studies on this question was carried out by Jean-Marc Dewaele, a researcher in multilingualism at Birkbeck, University of London. He asked 1,459 adults who spoke more than one language, with 77 different first languages among them, about how they experienced the phrase “I love you” in each of their languages.1
A majority said the phrase felt strongest in their first language.1 That fits what many people feel instinctively. The language you grew up with is the language of your parents, your childhood and your first experiences of love. Its words arrive already loaded with memory.
But the answer was not the same for everyone. Some participants felt the phrase was equally strong in their first language and a later one, and some felt it was strongest in a language they learned later.1 Whether people felt the weight of the words in a later language was linked to several things: how dominant that language felt in their life, how and at what age they learned it, and how much they had lived and socialized in it.1
In other words, emotional weight is not fixed by birth. It grows with experience. A language you use to talk about your day, to argue, to laugh and to comfort someone can come to carry real feeling, even if you learned it as an adult.
When love lives in a second language.
Knowing how individuals feel about the words is one thing. Living a whole relationship in a language that is not your first is another. Dewaele and Lora Salomidou studied exactly this, with 429 people in relationships where language and culture differed between the partners, using an online questionnaire and written interviews.2
Their findings show a real challenge, and a hopeful path through it. Opinions were divided: about a third of participants said they had no difficulty, while about half mentioned limits in the foreign language and a lack of emotional resonance in it.2 Some described feeling restricted in the words they could find, or feeling that their words, or their partner’s, sounded less sincere at the start of the relationship.2
Then something changed. For more than three quarters of participants, those obstacles blurred within months.2 Longer relationships brought what the researchers call affective socialization in the foreign language, and the partner’s language often became the language of the heart.2 The researchers also found that women were more likely to adopt their partner’s language.2 And a quarter of participants described something many people do not expect: a sense of emotional liberation in the foreign language.2
That last point deserves a moment. For some people, a second language feels freer. It does not carry the rules, the embarrassment or the family voices that their first language does. Saying “I love you” in a new language can feel like saying it for the first time, without the history attached.
A related paper by Dewaele looked closer at the practical challenges these couples face in expressing emotion.3 Most participants reported some degree of difficulty, but most agreed that love and emotional acculturation, gradually learning how feelings work in the other person’s language and culture, helped them overcome the language barriers.3 The paper concludes that partners in these couples faced serious and sometimes completely unexpected challenges in communicating emotions, but generally managed to overcome them after some months.3
It is not only the language. It is the culture.
There is another layer to this, and it can cause misunderstandings even between people who speak the same second language well. Cultures differ in how often, and to whom, people say “I love you” at all.
A study by Catherine Caldwell-Harris, Ann Kronrod and Joyce Yang compared how university students in Beijing and Shanghai used the Chinese phrase for “I love you” with how American students in the United States used the English phrase.4 The Chinese respondents were overall more reserved than the Americans in expressing love, and differed especially in avoiding the phrase with family, above all with parents.4
The two groups also gave different reasons for saying it. The reasons American students mentioned most often related to the inherent importance of saying “I love you”, while this was the reason Chinese students mentioned least.4 Bicultural Chinese interviewees described doing caring actions, or even saying “I love you” in English, as substitutes for saying it in Chinese.4 The researchers connect this pattern to the difference between cultures where meaning is carried mostly in words and cultures where much of it is carried by context and action.4
For a couple from two different cultures, this matters. One partner may wait for the words, while the other is saying it every day in a different way: a meal cooked, a message asking whether you have eaten, a long journey made without complaint. Neither is wrong. They are speaking different dialects of love, and part of the work of the relationship is learning to hear both.
What this means for couples across borders.
The research offers several practical lessons for couples who do not share a first language.
First, early awkwardness is normal, and it usually passes. In the large study of couples, about half described limits in the foreign language, but for more than three quarters the obstacles faded within months.2 If your words feel thin at the beginning, that is not a sign the feelings are thin.
Second, feelings grow into a language through use. The weight of “I love you” in a later language was linked to how much people lived and socialized in it.1 The more of your real life you share in a language, the more feeling it can hold. Talking about everyday things, not only big ones, is part of how that happens.
Third, learn a little of each other’s language, especially the words that matter. Over time, the partner’s language often became the language of the heart.2 Hearing even a few words of love in your own first language, from someone who learned them for you, can carry a weight that fluent words in a shared second language sometimes cannot.
Fourth, talk about how love is shown in your families and cultures. Some people say “I love you” often and easily; others show it through actions and say it rarely, if ever.4 Asking your partner how love was expressed in the home they grew up in can prevent a lot of hurt, and help each of you notice love that is already there.
Finally, remember that translation is a bridge, not a replacement. Tools that translate messages can help two people understand each other from the first day. But the research suggests that the deepest sense of closeness comes from the slow, shared work of learning how the other person feels, in their words and in their ways.23
The answer.
So, does love lose something in a second language? For many people, at first, it can feel that way. Most multilingual people feel “I love you” most strongly in their first language, and about half of people in couples who do not share a first language describe real limits at the start.12
But the research also shows how quickly that gap tends to close. For most couples the obstacles fade within months, and the partner’s language can become the language of the heart.23 Love does not have to arrive in your first language to mean everything. It can grow into a new one, one conversation at a time.
Sources.
- Jean-Marc Dewaele (2008). The emotional weight of “I love you” in multilinguals’ languages. Journal of Pragmatics, 40(10), 1753–1780. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2008.03.002
- Jean-Marc Dewaele and Lora Salomidou (2017). Loving a partner in a foreign language. Journal of Pragmatics, 108, 116–130. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2016.12.009
- Jean-Marc Dewaele (2018). Pragmatic challenges in the communication of emotions in intercultural couples. Intercultural Pragmatics, 15(1), 29–55. doi:10.1515/ip-2017-0029
- Catherine Caldwell-Harris, Ann Kronrod and Joyce Yang (2013). Do more, say less: Saying “I love you” in Chinese and American cultures. Intercultural Pragmatics, 10(1), 41–69. doi:10.1515/ip-2013-0002