A Love Less Ordinary
"The most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous."
--Carrie Bradshaw
Carrie knows good sex. Erica knows good food. But when it comes to knowing about love, you have to hand it to the Italians. To prove that they have virtually patented the idea of l'amore, they have a gazillion terms to define every nuance of a relationship.
What do you call "someone I'm seeing but I'm not sure we are seriously committed"? Ragazzo/a.
What about "a significant someone who's here for the long run?" Fidanzato/a
See? In English, we lump it all under boy/girlfriend. "Fling" doesn't really work coz you cannot seriously introduce him/her to your friends like this:"Hey, meet my fling.", without sounding a tad, um, offensive. While you're at it, would you call an ex-fling a "flung"?
And then for relationships that are more fire and passion than anything, the Italians have the term l'amante. And of course, you may possiby go on to become sposo/a (newlyweds) and marito/moglie (husband and wife).
In a restaurant, we very rarely order a dish that has no name. But we often enter into relationships that we cannot define. Weird, inconvenient, out-of-the-ordinary alliances. Apparently, the English vocabulary has not expanded as fast as the complex new hybrids that love has spawned.
Maybe defining stuff isn't that important. What matters is you know there's something there. Why spend precious time trying to fit a circle into a square box? Will it all work out better if it had a name?
And what do you call a friend who became a significant other you've since broken up with but are still sort of dating again? Ah, the Italians are still working on that one.
--Carrie Bradshaw
Carrie knows good sex. Erica knows good food. But when it comes to knowing about love, you have to hand it to the Italians. To prove that they have virtually patented the idea of l'amore, they have a gazillion terms to define every nuance of a relationship.
What do you call "someone I'm seeing but I'm not sure we are seriously committed"? Ragazzo/a.
What about "a significant someone who's here for the long run?" Fidanzato/a
See? In English, we lump it all under boy/girlfriend. "Fling" doesn't really work coz you cannot seriously introduce him/her to your friends like this:"Hey, meet my fling.", without sounding a tad, um, offensive. While you're at it, would you call an ex-fling a "flung"?
And then for relationships that are more fire and passion than anything, the Italians have the term l'amante. And of course, you may possiby go on to become sposo/a (newlyweds) and marito/moglie (husband and wife).
In a restaurant, we very rarely order a dish that has no name. But we often enter into relationships that we cannot define. Weird, inconvenient, out-of-the-ordinary alliances. Apparently, the English vocabulary has not expanded as fast as the complex new hybrids that love has spawned.
Maybe defining stuff isn't that important. What matters is you know there's something there. Why spend precious time trying to fit a circle into a square box? Will it all work out better if it had a name?
And what do you call a friend who became a significant other you've since broken up with but are still sort of dating again? Ah, the Italians are still working on that one.
posted by Erica Tay at 7:43 PM
1 Comments:
Spanish, being related to Italian, have these forms and conventions too. Here are some almost-equivalents.
"We're just fooling around" - Solo estamos vacilando (nothing serious)
"We're just seeing each other" - Tenemos un cuento (literally: we have a story)
- also meaning: we can see other people too.
Serious relationships:
"We're going out" - Estamos saliendo (implies: let everyone know!)
boy/girlfriend - novio/a
husband/wife - esposo/a
And of course,
lovers - amantes (implies sexual activity - the fire and passion thing)
English *is* pretty limiting, isn't it??
R. :)
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