Whether it's amour or amore, some words are just more romantic than others.
By Tom Miller — Written on Feb 17, 2010
A survey conducted by a cohort of linguists says that the French word "amour" is the most romantic word in the entirety of the human language experience. Apparently the list extends beyond the Homo Sapiens species as the Klingon "qaparha," which means "I love you" one was the least romantic words. Read: Male Take: Why Romance Matters
Dean Martin and his fans shouldn't be too upset, as the Italian "amore" (a near-homophone of the winner) finished a close-close second. Frankly, Dean Martin may be to blame for "amore" catching the silver medal. C'mon, how many people are wobbly kneed over being compared to "big pizza pie" and whatever "gay tarantella" means? Read: Does Love Negate The Language Barrier?
The third place word was "bellissima" or beautiful lady in Italian and Spanish (are we sure they aren't the same language?).
At any rate, Italians can take solace in the assertion that their language as ranked as the most romantic overall. Not to give too much credence to cultural relativism, but doesn't this seem a little biased? I know that Italian, French and Spanish are members of the Romance family of languages (based on Latin) but there are probably some really lovely phrases in German and Russian and that language that people dig, right? Read: Which Love Language Do You Speak?
Personally, I think English is a pretty romantic language. We feel free Shanghai-ing the best words in other languages. Esperanto gets my vote for sexiest. There's nothing like taking a long road trip to the smooth, sexy tones of Ralph Fiennes reading The English Patient in Esperanto.
What language do you think is the most romantic? Which words?
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