I Love You

One of the most powerful emotions a human can feel is love. It’s no surprise that one of the first phrases people often try to learn when learning a foreign language (after the most important ‘where is the toilet?) is ‘I love you”.

As a native English speaker, I know that this phrase is rather loaded. In the typical romantic context, it is not a phrase you throw around lightly. Japanese is like this too, except it takes it a step further.

Raise your hand if you think Japanese people say the same phrase as we do in English. Instead of saying “I love you” you think they might say:

あなたは愛しています。
anata ha ai shite-imasu
I love you

If you hand went up, you are wrong. Japanese, as a general rule, do not say “I love you” directly. That is are too direct and strong. Remember that modesty is a virtuous quality in Japan and love is no exception.

If you feel passionate about somebody want to tell them how much you care for them, remember, keep it modest, use love-lite, otherwise known as like. Say something like:

~は好きですよ
~ha suki desu yo
I like you

where ~ is their name. Saying you (あなた) in this situation might sound a bit textbooky.

What’s that? Saying you like somebody doesn’t quite have the zing you are looking for? You like (好き) potato chips, you like ramen, but you don’t just like your special somebody. Luckily we can still remain modest and raise our level of like a bit by adding the adverb 本当に (hontou-ni (really)). Our stronger sentence would then be:

〜は本当に好きですよ
~ha hontou-ni suki desu-yo
I really like you

Saying “I Like You” or “I really like you” might not have the same zing to our ears, but if you think modestly, it has the power of 1,000 suns.

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Learning Japanese? Look up this and more in Jisho and Jisho Touch.