Jeg kan rime hjerte på smerte

[rikke_leonhart]

I know this is pretty random (even for me), but bear with me.

There aren't many instances where I will say that I love Danish more than English, but in this occasion, I will.

The word "boyfriend" and the word "girlfriend" annoy me. They almost always call for some kind of clarification, some kind of "it's my friend, who happens to be a boy" or the other way around, and I'm not thrilled. The same thing with German, where you (unless you're being poetic and call them Geliebte) say "Freund" and "Freundin" for boy- and girlfriend, respectively. (And you German people, if you have corrections, throw them at me, I've been neglecing my German lately.)

In Danish, however, we have the same words - "ven" for friend and "veninde" for "friend who happens to be a girl". For the actual term for boyfriend and girlfriend, we have the word "kæreste" which means: Dearest. So we actually go around saying "this is my dearest." And I love that pretty fiercely. I think it's an amazing thing to declare.


Now I will go and watch The Artist with my dad. Toodles!

(Does anyone know if the BTK Twins app is worth the money? Can't decide T___T)

Comments

[g-esquared.livejournal.com]

that's lovely. (: how do you pronounce it? danish is so completely alien to me, but it's intriguing.

i love linguistic analysis. in chinese/cantonese, 'boy/girlfriend' are direct translations, but they're pretty much always taken in the romantic sense. then there are the more slangy terms, particularly in cantonese - the word for daughter can mean girlfriend too, depending on the preceding article.

[jamasunda.livejournal.com]

It's the same in Icelandic :D
Vinur (a friend who's a guy) and vinkona (a friend who's a girl), and kærasti (dearest(boy)) and kærasta (dearest (girl)). It is quite nice to have a distinction like this, it can get quite troublematic in English if such a situation arises :/

[anachan87.livejournal.com]

lol, are we still set on Vday's week?xD

Anyway, I totally feel you because as someone who really lacks in romance and dislikes the melody of slavic languages, I adore all the options slovene language can give you (also, please note that we actually have the word 'love' in the name ;D) romance-wise.
First thing we are one of the few languages in the world to still have the dual form, which means we have two different options when it comes to talk in non-singular. We have a special form for just two people, and then another one when we discuss group of three and more people.
Then, when it comes to terms we have a female and male form for friend, one for boyfriend/girlfriend (which literally gets translated as 'my girl/my boy'), than we have the terms for fiancee (but it's rarely used) and at least two versions of the endearment (one literally translates as my dear, the other as my loved) but they are rarely used for introducing, afaik. I mean, usually some of my friends calls their boyfriend/girlfriend with that word when we're talking inside our circle, I never got introduced a person as someone's dearest/loved o_O
And then, we have another thing that I adore (and that makes me curse when I write in english because gaaaah I don't know how to explain it in that language).
We have a hell lot of words to explain exactly how much we like someone.
We have a term to say 'I like you', one for 'I care about you' and then the 'I love you' – and all of them are being used a hell lot which makes things less complicated (at least I get confused in English, because they pretty much say 'I love you' right away and it just baffles me, like when Kurt told Will he loved Blaine, I was just lahgldbvolvdalovb HOW AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN EXACTLY WITH LOVE??? Now that I think about it, Blaine is one of the rare characters in a tv show that actually said 'I care about you' before jumping on the 'i love you' wagon. Actually, now that I really think about it, he specifies that he likes Jeremiah but cares about Kurt. Oh the irony, the one character whose emotions doesn't confuse me is the one that fails at romance, lol... Ok, now I'm stopping talking about glee, I swear...)
And we have at least three different ways to say that you are crushing on someone/you are smitten that I know of (adding the slangs words there are probably even more).

Ok, now I'm really done /off to clean the room

[madsci12.livejournal.com]

In Filipino we only have one and that's "kasintahan".
From the root word "sinta" which means love, admiration, etc.
We don't have a direct translation for girlfriend nor boyfriend so we use them as is.