I
have a box that has followed me
from one childhood room to the
next. When I was seven, it rested
under my bed. At 10, it moved into a
room upstairs with me and onto a closet
shelf. When I was 17, it wedged itself
into a corner between my dresser and
the wall. Now, it just sits on my desk in
my apartment. Sometimes I’ll run my
hand over it in the morning, or I’ll open
it up when hit by a wave of nostalgia.
Inside it are love letters of different
forms — full-length correspondences,
notes scribbled on scraps of paper and
cards. The letters have undoubtedly
changed over the years. Elementary
school valentines were ousted by notes
from my high school friends. A card
from my parents for my
fourteenth birthday was
replaced with one from my
nineteenth.
They are from classmates,
friends,
my
brothers,
family, old partners and
new ones. Each of these
letters is signed with love,
and each person who has
written a note is someone
I once loved, or still do, in
return. Even though the
love I feel for my aunt is
different from the love I
feel for my best friend; the
love I felt for my tenth-
grade boyfriend is different
from the love I feel for
my current one; the love
I felt for my high school
teammates is different than
the love I feel for my older
brother, I still tell them all
the same thing: I love you.
But the more love I
experience,
the
more
frustrating it is to realize
that it is, quite frankly, impossible to
express the nuances of my love in words.
We are complex enough to notice the
slight differences in the love we feel
for our mother versus for our father,
yet our words are not complex enough
to describe those feelings — at least in
English.
I am not bilingual. I was raised in
an English-speaking home by English-
speaking parents in English-speaking
cities with English-spoken “I love
you’s.” But last December, at a small
table in the back Chela’s on South
Fifth Ave, my friend Maggie, who
grew up speaking Bulgarian, raised
the question between bites of her taco
bowl: What if our options for saying
“I love you” in our native languages
affect our ability to express — or even
fully feel — love?
It’s not necessarily a new question,
or at least the part which posits
that different languages affect how
we think and act. Linguists and
neuroscientists have been asking it for
decades, and even though it is widely
debated and hard to prove, it does have
a name: linguistic relativity, or the
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, proposes that
the language we speak fundamentally
affects how we think, act and perceive
the world around us.
In one famous experiment, Russian
speakers and English speakers were
shown multiple slides, each with three
blue squares — one on top and two on
the bottom, in a pyramid shape. Two of
the squares were the same shade of blue,
and the third was slightly different.
The study found that Russian speakers
were better at quickly discriminating
between the two shades of blue.
This,
the
researchers
proposed,
was because Russian makes linguistic
distinctions between lighter shades
of blue and darker ones. Essentially,
Russian speakers’ cognitive ability to
identify blue was different from English
speakers’ ability simply because their
language has more words to categorize
the color than English does.
As interesting as it is, being able to
process colors a little more quickly
is much different than experiencing
love in an entirely different way. But
the opposing view to linguistic relativity
provides no more comfort: It argues
that what we experience and perceive
as culturally important are what we
put into our language. It would mean
that English speakers feel less of a need
to express the nuances, emotions and
complexities of love since there’s only
one way to say “I love you” in English.
That’s just not the case.
Actually,
it
seems
that
in
the
United States, love is everywhere.
Another
study
at
Baruch
College
interviewed dozens of people about
the use of the phrase “I love you” in
their various cultures and languages.
Almost every subject who did not grow
up with American culture — but instead
with Korean, Guyanese, Romanian or
Jamaican cultures, respectively — told
researchers that their cultures used the
term “I love you” much less often than
Americans did.
The
reasons
they
gave
for
not
overusing the phrase were similar:
Using “I love you” too often detracts
from its importance; “I love you” is so
meaningful that you’d only say it to
someone you intend to marry; saying
“I love you” before you really mean it is
shallow.
The phrase is used so generously in
American culture — especially when the
year nears Feb. 14 — that I sometimes
feel it lacks the meaning I want it to have
when I say it and really, really mean
it. But what does that say about our
culture? Are we simply eager to love, or
is the depth of our love compromised by
our fervor to feel it? Are other cultures
somehow more earnest in their ability to
love?
Seeking to sate some of my curiosity,
I spoke to a few bilingual people. The
first was my former Spanish professor
Wendy Gutierrez-Tashian.
Wendy is from Lima, Perú and teaches
Spanish in the Residential College. The
first time I met her was on the first day
of my freshman year. She speaks quickly
and with lots of emotion, so I have vivid
memories of her giving instructions and
greeting me at the speed of light in a
language I couldn’t yet comprehend. I
ended up making it through her Spanish
class OK, and the conversation we had
together in Amer’s last week was one of
our first in English.
The two main love phrases in Spanish
are “te quiero” and “te amo.” And
although they translate pretty well
to “I love you,” Wendy explained the
difference to me as “te quiero” as being
used more often for parents, children
and friends. In contrast, she says, “For
me, it’s more emotional to say ‘te amo’
because that means that I cannot love
you more than that — I have reached the
top of my love.”
But
“te
amo”
is
not
reserved
specifically for romantic relationships
(although this is the context when it
is most often used). Instead of being
expressly romantic, Wendy told me
“te amo” communicates an incredibly
powerful, deep kind of love which “te
quiero” does not.
She
also
added
that
“te quiero mucho,” “te
quiero
muchísimo,”
“te
amo mucho” and “te amo
muchísimo” each convey
varying depths and levels of
love, with “te amo mucho”
and “te amo muchísimo”
expressing
something
Wendy describes as being
“beyond love.”
She says these linguistic
differences are apparent
in behavior as well: “In
Perú, it’s just normal for
people to kiss when they
greet but (in the United
States), it’s just very subtle
and transactional and it
shouldn’t be like that. In
Latin America it’s not like
that — you see a friend and
you hug, you really hug,
and they don’t let you go.”
There is one culture in
particular in which people
show
their
love
almost
explicitly, as opposed to vocalizing
it: Japanese. I talked to Engineering
sophomore Kilala Ichie-Vincent. Over
the past month, I’ve noticed a few
things about Kilala: She likes to cook,
especially with chili oil. Holding her
hair back from her face are always four
hair clips, which she color coordinates
with a vintage sweater or a chic pair
of denim cargo pants. She’s passionate
about design and creation, and she’s
hoping to transfer to the architecture
school.
Kilala was raised by a Japanese
mother and Black father in Queens, New
York. She grew up speaking Japanese
with her grandparents, visiting them in
Tokyo and other parts of Japan, but she
was always trying to balance this with
being an American kid, teenager and
then young adult in New York City.
3B
Friday, February 14, 2020 // The Statement
3B
BY ELLIE KATZ, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
Translating love
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
ILLUSTRATION BY CARA JHANG