Untranslatable Words for Love Around the World
Entry No. 147 ·
By The IF Team
Some languages have single words for feelings about love that English needs a whole sentence to describe. Japanese has koi no yokan, the sense on meeting someone that you are going to fall for them. Norwegian and Danish have forelsket for the giddy early stage of being in love; Tagalog has kilig for the flutter of a romantic moment; Portuguese has saudade for longing for someone who is not there; and Brazilian Portuguese has cafuné for running your fingers tenderly through a loved one’s hair. None is truly untranslatable — each can be explained — but each names something English leaves unnamed.
Researchers have collected hundreds of them. The psychologist Tim Lomas, who studies what he calls positive lexicography, gathered 609 words relating to love from languages around the world and sorted them into fourteen kinds of love. Words like these matter because naming a feeling helps you hold it, and sometimes helps you say it. That is the job IF does too: it lets people be honest about what they feel for someone, single or not and whoever the someone is, and holds a feeling that started in real life until the time comes to act on it.
Words for the moment before love
Koi no yokan (Japanese)
Literally ‘a premonition of love’ (恋の予感). It is not love at first sight, which Japanese calls hitomebore, but something quieter: a sense, on meeting someone, that love is on its way. English-language word lists have made it famous; in Japan it is an everyday phrase for the feeling that something is about to begin. If you have ever felt it, whether love at first sight is real looks at what that first spark can and cannot tell you.
Mamihlapinatapai (Yaghan)
Often quoted as the most succinct word in the world: a look shared by two people, each hoping the other will make the first move. It comes from Yaghan, the language of the Yaghan people of Tierra del Fuego, at the southern tip of South America, and was recorded by a nineteenth-century missionary. Linguists are sceptical of the romantic gloss — the word may originally have meant something closer to making each other feel awkward — but the feeling it has come to name is familiar to anyone who has hovered at the end of a good evening.
Words for falling in love
Forelsket (Norwegian and Danish)
Forelsket simply means ‘in love’, and Norwegians and Danes would not call it untranslatable. What delights English speakers is the distinction it carries: forelskelse is the dizzy, early state of falling, while the verb elske is for love that has settled. English gets by with ‘in love’ and ‘love’, which is close, but less precise about the stage.
Kilig (Tagalog)
The rush you feel when something romantic happens, or when you watch it happen to someone else: the text you were hoping for, the almost-kiss in a film. Kilig is so widely used in Philippine English that the Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2016.
Words for love that has settled
Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese)
The act of running your fingers gently through the hair of someone you love. Brazilian dictionaries define it as a caress of the head; its origin is uncertain, though many trace it to Kimbundu, a language of Angola. It is a small, wordless gesture of trust, the kind that only happens between people who are comfortable together.
Cwtch (Welsh English)
A Welsh word, pronounced roughly ‘kutch’, for a cuddle — though it means more than that. A cwtch is a safe, warm hold, the opposite of a polite hug, and its older sense of a cubbyhole or little cupboard says something about how a good embrace feels. The Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2005.
Jeong (Korean)
Jeong (정) is the deep affection that builds up between people simply through time spent together — with a friend, a neighbour, a partner, even a place — and it can feel stronger than liking. Psychologists have described it as a visceral sense of connectedness that may grow from closeness without needing intimacy. Korean even has a phrase, miun jeong goun jeong, for the bond that grows through both the irritating times and the lovely ones. It is a different idea from in-yun, the Korean word for the providence that brings two people together: in-yun is about why you meet, jeong about what grows once you have.
Words for love at a distance
Saudade (Portuguese)
Perhaps the most famous ‘untranslatable’ word of all: a deep, melancholy longing for a person or thing that is absent, often with the sense that it may not come back. It runs through Portuguese fado and Brazilian song. Saudade is not quite sadness, though. There is sweetness in it, because you only feel it for something worth missing, and telling someone you miss them is its practical cousin.
Retrouvailles (French)
The happiness of finding someone again after time apart: a reunion at an airport, an old friend at a party, a partner home from a long trip. French uses it for any reunion, but it is the right word for the moment a long wait ends well.
The Greek words for love, and a common mix-up
Lists of love words often claim that the ancient Greeks had eight words for love. They had several: eros for passionate, desiring love; philia for the deep affection of friendship; storge for the familiar love within families; and agape, which later came to mean selfless, unconditional love. Others that often appear alongside them — ludus for playful love, pragma for practical, long-standing love, mania for anxious, all-consuming love — owe more to a 1973 book by the Canadian sociologist John Alan Lee, who borrowed Greek and Latin words to name six ‘styles’ of loving. Psychologists later built a questionnaire to measure his styles, and versions of it are still used in research.
Why naming a feeling helps
Collecting words like these is not just a game for word lovers. Putting feelings into words seems to make them easier to handle: in one brain-imaging study at UCLA, people who chose a word for the emotion on a face showed less activity in the amygdala, a part of the brain involved in emotional reactions, than people who chose a name to go with it.
It is the same reason the five love languages caught on: a name makes a need easier to talk about. Lomas makes a similar case for borrowed words. Learning a name for a feeling you have had but never named can help you notice it, understand it, and share it. If you have been carrying something for someone that English never quite fitted — koi no yokan at a friend’s birthday, saudade for the one who moved away — having the word is a start. Saying it is the next step.
Where IF fits: a word for one person
Every language on this list found a way to name a feeling. IF gives you a way to say yours to the person it is about. It is a dating app made for honesty about feelings — single or in a relationship, for whoever it is you have fallen for — and for holding a feeling you found in real life until the right time to act on it.
Between two single people on IF, the word is a Like, and a chat opens once it is accepted. Where one of you is with someone, or they have never joined, the word becomes an IF: sealed, private, written for one reader and no longer than 250 characters. Swipe can lead you to them, or Search can, using the handle, number or email address that they shared with you. No conversation can begin on IF while a relationship stands between you, so your words simply wait, sealed, until you are both single.
They may get a notice that an IF is waiting, but your name and your words stay hidden until it is revealed. Someone who has not joined hears nothing at all unless you used their email address, in which case one short invitation is sent; a number or handle leaves the IF quietly waiting in case they sign up. There is no charge for your first IF, and how to send the perfect IF can help you choose the words. Two hundred and fifty characters is not much — but then, neither is koi no yokan, and look how much that holds.
Questions people ask
What is the Japanese word for love at first sight?
Hitomebore (一目惚れ), literally ‘falling for someone at one glance’. It is different from koi no yokan, which is the sense that love is coming rather than love arriving all at once.
What is the most beautiful word for love?
There is no official answer, but saudade, cafuné and koi no yokan top many people’s lists, because each captures one precise moment: missing, tenderness and anticipation. The most beautiful one is probably whichever names something you have felt yourself.
How do you say ‘I love you’ in other languages?
A few, with the nuance that matters: je t’aime in French; te quiero or, for deeper love, te amo in Spanish; ti amo in Italian, where ti voglio bene is the warmer, everyday version for friends and family as well as partners; ich liebe dich in German; saranghae in Korean; wǒ ài nǐ in Mandarin; and mahal kita in Tagalog. In Japanese, aishiteru exists but is rarely said out loud — people tend to say suki da, ‘I like you’, and let it carry the weight.
What is the Greek word for unconditional love?
Agape. In ancient Greek it was a word for love and affection; over time it came to mean selfless, unconditional love, and that is the sense it usually carries today.
Some feelings take a whole language to name, and only a sentence to say. If yours is for someone you cannot tell just yet, write it in an IF, and let it keep until the time is right.