Japanese culture is truly unique in its interpretations of the world around us. In particular, the subtleties within its language are a fascinating reflection of their worldly views. Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I found the “levels of love” to be an enthralling concept.
Today’s writing is going to be a short piece on how to express different levels of love in Japanese.
At the very initial stage, one will generally say “suki da” just as a means of telling someone that they like them. It’s a mostly playful term and often times used for a confession of love.
Once in an actual relationship, couples will generally say “daisuki da” to truly express love. Instead of translating to “I like you,” it’s better translated as “I love you” because the “dai” (which translates to “big”) implies a deeper level than “liking” to where it’s actually considered “love.”
Saying “aishiteru” would be expressing love at the highest level. This term is rarely used even amongst married couples! Japanese culture values actions over words, so once married and deeply in love, Japanese couples know that their love is implicit, and rarely need to express it with words.
Knowing these subtle details helped enhance my viewing of certain scenes, such as when Itachi finally reveals that all of his seemingly evil actions were actually done to protect the village and his little brother Sasuke. He then tells Sasuke “aishiteru,” as a means of expressing the highest form of love for his brother.
For what it’s worth, min’na aishiteru. (I love all y’all). I enjoy writing/sharing my experiences with friends, family, and fans. I’ve loved being able to engage with and connect with an audience. I just wanted to say that y’all mean the world to me!
As always, thanks for reading!
The original post link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CE2z6rmnKfi/?igshid=vie26jdv9f0g
12 comments
Eh, my husband and I have always used 「愛してる」throughout our relationship. Using 好き or 大好き feels kind of immature. I’m sure it totally depends on the couple though.
Everytime I turn on the wonderful variety shows on Japanese TV I’m reminded of how worldly and rich the culture here is.
A guy with knowledge of a few cultures believes Japanese in regards to love be unique. You need to delve into other cultures and Japanese history prior to make such statements. You’re fetishizing Japanese culture. Hallmark weeboo move dude.
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What love level is エッチしようぜ?
You’ve been corrected about the daisuki, so I’ll offer another perspective.
There’s a difference between 好き and 恋 and 愛 as well, and you obviously have 惚れ and its friends. You have different words for other kinds of love like 愛情 and 友情 etc.
For what its worth, when my fiancée and I started dating (long distance), it was the first time I’d had feelings like that, and didn’t know what they were. She said that it was obviously 恋. At first, I wasn’t sure if I liked her, so I told her 好きかも.
Now, we do say 愛してる often to each other (and have a sign for when she’s too shy to say it out loud, like in front of other people; repeat something 3 times (e.g., tapping the table or a leg etc)). We also use 大好き and 好き quite a lot.
For example, yesterday, she was going to sleep, but I was calling with my old boss. I asked her to wait for two minutes so that we could call goodnight. She replied with ちゅき〜♡♡♡. It has a feeling of comfort for us, like being hugged from behind.
大好き as well, though it’s more when we feel appreciative of each other (e.g., I’m looking for a job and trying to figure out a way to get us to meet again because COVID, and when we talk about it, I often get a 大好き).
Like you said, 愛してる is love at the highest level, but other nice ones that we use occasionally include 一生一緒 and 出会って感謝してる or similar variations.
>Japanese culture values actions over words
I’m guessing you’ve never worked at a Japanese company
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you should have given a warning about spoilers or something, i’m only like 100 episodes in
Here I thought you were going to ask about the A through D thing.
See you on r/japancirclejerk
I want a PlayStation tattoo, but in Japanese. What the Correct way to say PlayStation in Japanese?