Oh, this lovely post. The medium of Vorkosigan fic for discussing the different nuances of loving declarations in different languages is surely what the internet is made for.
Apologies in advance for making this all about me, but my head is full of this right now.
I use different languages a lot to express affection, because they feel...better for it than English, somehow. I make up endearments a lot (hello, short-face! how are you, loveysocks?) but they always have a little bit of General Melchitt to them, a little bit of performance and wordplay. In Spanish, though, things feel a lot more natural, like the explicit affection belongs in the phrase rather than being shoehorned in, and it's much easier to write things which combine the romantic and the erotic without either seeming out of place. I actually find it actively hard to speak Spanish without slipping into endearments. It could be that the culture I learned Spanish in, and fell in love in, has much more incidence of people expressing romantic and other kinds of affection verbally, maybe it's that that degree of detachment, with it not being my native language, makes it easier to own up to soppiness.
Gaelic again, much better for cheeky remarks to close friends and family-type people, maybe because I've never been in love with a Gaelic speaker but have childhood friends with whom our close, joking-relationships happen in Gaelic. But it is so beautiful for love poetry too. If I'm really, really head over heels about somebody I want to write to them in Gaelic, because it feels so intimate and the poetry so beautiful. Like I want them to see how the beauty of the words themselves is like the beauty of my love for them. If I had a relationship with the depth of loyalty that there is between, say, Aral and Simon, it would be all in Gaelic. Simon and Alys, English. Formal, you see, and correct. Aral and Cordelia, Spanish - loving and practical and erotic. Miles and Ekaterin, Gaelic. Ivan and anyone, Spanish. Cordelia and Bothari and Miles and Bothari, Gaelic. This sounds pretentious as hell, I'm sorry.
Writing in Spanish is different again though. I realised there was something really special about the chap I've been seeing when I would sit on the bus home composing little text message poems in Spanish.
My head's a bit messy just now from doing intense ethnography-writing and having to submerge myself back into the years when I was very, very in love with someone with whom I only ever spoke in Spanish. Probably that great love had something to do with all of this, too.
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Apologies in advance for making this all about me, but my head is full of this right now.
I use different languages a lot to express affection, because they feel...better for it than English, somehow. I make up endearments a lot (hello, short-face! how are you, loveysocks?) but they always have a little bit of General Melchitt to them, a little bit of performance and wordplay. In Spanish, though, things feel a lot more natural, like the explicit affection belongs in the phrase rather than being shoehorned in, and it's much easier to write things which combine the romantic and the erotic without either seeming out of place. I actually find it actively hard to speak Spanish without slipping into endearments. It could be that the culture I learned Spanish in, and fell in love in, has much more incidence of people expressing romantic and other kinds of affection verbally, maybe it's that that degree of detachment, with it not being my native language, makes it easier to own up to soppiness.
Gaelic again, much better for cheeky remarks to close friends and family-type people, maybe because I've never been in love with a Gaelic speaker but have childhood friends with whom our close, joking-relationships happen in Gaelic. But it is so beautiful for love poetry too. If I'm really, really head over heels about somebody I want to write to them in Gaelic, because it feels so intimate and the poetry so beautiful. Like I want them to see how the beauty of the words themselves is like the beauty of my love for them. If I had a relationship with the depth of loyalty that there is between, say, Aral and Simon, it would be all in Gaelic. Simon and Alys, English. Formal, you see, and correct. Aral and Cordelia, Spanish - loving and practical and erotic. Miles and Ekaterin, Gaelic. Ivan and anyone, Spanish. Cordelia and Bothari and Miles and Bothari, Gaelic. This sounds pretentious as hell, I'm sorry.
Writing in Spanish is different again though. I realised there was something really special about the chap I've been seeing when I would sit on the bus home composing little text message poems in Spanish.
My head's a bit messy just now from doing intense ethnography-writing and having to submerge myself back into the years when I was very, very in love with someone with whom I only ever spoke in Spanish. Probably that great love had something to do with all of this, too.