The Multilanguage of Love

This article on love and language gap gets me reflecting about my own past relationships and the languages we used. I dated foreigner before, even if I dated Indonesian, they happened to speak at least two other languages other than their mother tongue. No, I didnt put multilanguage as my requirement for a guy, it just so happened that way.

Myself, I am trilingual. I like learning languages, I just dont have the brain to retain them or the tongue to speak it fluently without any accent. There are situations that I prefer using other language than my own mother tongue to express myself, and there are situations where I wished my counterpart speaks Bahasa Indonesia.

Unlike the writer of that article, it didnt bother me that my boyfriend told me that he loves me in other language other than his own. What matter is the emotion behind it. Did he really mean it or not? Cause you know, sometimes you just blurt out some thing that is not supposed to be said. Since it's already out there, you cant take it back. And it became awkward afterward.

As I mentioned earlier, in certain situation I prefer using certain language. I find "ik hou van jou" is more difficult to say than "I love you", or even "aku cinta kamu" eventho it conveys the same meaning. In Dutch I prefer "ik heb je lief" which is more poetic and in Indonesian "aku sayang kamu". Then again it also depends on to whom I am saying it.

Of course using other language increases the chance of miscommunication because some nuances can be lost in translation, take the example in the article:

In German you can say “ich habe mich gerade wieder in dich verliebt,” which translates as “I just fell in love with you again,” but which actually means a moment when you realize again why you are in love with someone, an outburst of love.

Imagine debating about something and one of you asked the meaning of the word the other just used, it can be irritating at times. But you cant say that it only happens when you have relationship with a foreigner, because even with fellow Indonesian from other tribe you can experience the same problem when they use words from their language or dialect.

On the other hand, you cant deny certain accent is sexier than the other, and your vocabs grow;)