Disclaimer: I’m a learner, so keep in mind this isn’t all accurate, I only share my experience of learning it. Full of random notes.
Last update: 11/02/2019
爱
愛
ài
-
to love
-
affection
-
to be fond of
-
to like
liàn ài
-
in love
-
to have an affair
恋 (liàn): to feel attached to; to long for; to love;
Then someone explain
The difference between 愛 and 恋 is worth diving a bit deeper into. My view is as follows:
愛: sacrificial, unconditional, love for the other person’s sake (often parallels the Greek agape, but can extend into philos as sawa mentions)
恋: selfish, conditional, love for one’s own sake (often parallels the Greek eros)
With 愛, the focus is on the other person: you are loving that person for his/her sake, and even if he/she doesn’t return your love, that won’t change your feelings. With 恋, the focus is on you: it’s all about experiencing that feeling of being in love, and it rarely continues if the feeling turns stale or if the object of your love fails to return your love.
…Somehow in japanese become deep /gasp
I see Itoshite mean Aishite eh? Somehow google said it’s itoshite? I’m so confused!
I need to take note about this
It is the other way. On the scale,
愛is stronger than恋. Besides that,愛can be used generally, including the kind of love that Christianity talks about, or the love in between a family.恋is only for relations/feelings toward a person of the targetted sexual orientation.As for the meaning of
愛人and恋人, you have to be careful. Whereas恋人purely means lover,愛人means a lover that is not official, such as one in an adulterous relationship, or someone for just having sexual relationship. This is one of the words that need caution when also learning Chinese. In Chinese,愛人means spouse.
Don’t use 愛人 in japanese it’s bad, it
is best translated as “mistress”: a lover you have outside of your “official relationship” or with whom you are having an affair.
Note: Girls talk don’t use blatantly 恋, ‘suki’ is used most of the time.
Oh yeah, I search again what mean 恋爱 but I found related topic 谈恋爱, it means two people dating! When I google just 恋爱 the side bar said ‘falling in love’, but some people said it has been degenerate?? I don’t really understand?? I mean the 谈恋爱 (aka TLA the tán liàn ài).
谈 = talk
Ahhh I get it now!, it’s called dating or in relationship!, the older generation use 谈恋爱 to talk to each other, ‘date’ and lead to marriage, but now date is just date, not into serious date that lead into marriage, so we need context here.
談戀愛 Tán liàn’ài/Tarn liann’ay literally means “to be in a relationship” or “to be seeing someone”, but with the decline of morality* in the West, the English terms are drifting further and further from their traditional meaning.
Up until the mid-twentieth century, sexual mores used to be much closer to Chinese values. Today’s 談戀愛 is more like what Americans used to call “courting”,
暧昧 [ài mèi]: dubious; shady; secret.
Common phrase:
暧昧关系 (àimèi guānxì): dubious relationship.
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