Fun with the English Language (or: I’d love to love you, Love, but I don’t know what love to love with)
The Greek language has five separate words for love. They describe everything from romantic love to brotherly love to the love of God Almighty for us. The English language has one word. We use it to describe everything from the epic love of romantic tragedies to our preference in vegetables. Obviously, this can cause problems.
Example (in which two people are walking through a grocery store together):
Tricia: I love you Ben.
Ben: And I love you, Tricia.
Ben (internal monologue): She loves me. She really loves me. There is no greater feeling on earth than this.
Tricia (after walking into the produce section): Oooh! Apples! I love apples!
Ben (internal monologue): Apples? What the #$%^!
Fortunately for you, me, and the rest of the world’s population that speaks English (I assume you speak it if you can read this), the modern trend in English is to make up new words. I propose using this modern trend to help minimize confusion concerning the most confusing of words: love.
I initially thought that some sort of numeric system would be best. You know, Love 1 would be the love between a man and wife, Love 2 would be the love between brothers, Love 4.521 would be the love of overweight Caucasian men for poodles name Buffy, and so forth. This idea didn’t last long because anything involving numbers eventually degrades into math. I envisioned some twenty year old math major doing multivariable differential equations to determine why Kelly from second period wouldn’t go to coffee with him. For the sake of him, and all those like him, I cannot in good conscience recommend a numeric love-naming convention.
The following is the official, Tom endorsed, new love-naming convention:
Flove (long O): to be used to describe the love of a parent for a child or a sibling for another. Usage: “Billy, tell your brother you flove him.”
Romove (row-ove): to be used to describe the love of a man for a woman in a romantic sense and visa versa. Usage: “Billy, I romove you more than Juliet romoviefied Romeo.”
Grep: to be used to describe the affection one has for one’s pet. Usage: “I used to think I just liked Fido. But now I know that I truly grep him. He’s grepificated by me like no other dog.”
Foodove: to be used to describe affection for food products. Usage: “Oooh! Apples! I foodove apples!” (Think of the pain this simple word could have saved Ben.)
Confusificationifiedicate: to be used to describe the feeling associated with liking someone more than a friend but maybe not as much as “more than a friend” usually means because, you know, things are complicated and sometimes if feels like… but other times it feels so totally… you know? Usage: “Wanda, I so confisificationifiedicate you that I don’t know which way up is anymore.”
This is only a partial list, but I believe it’s obvious the kind of simplification that it would bring to the world.
Example (in which two people are walking through a grocery store together):
Tricia: I love you Ben.
Ben: And I love you, Tricia.
Ben (internal monologue): She loves me. She really loves me. There is no greater feeling on earth than this.
Tricia (after walking into the produce section): Oooh! Apples! I love apples!
Ben (internal monologue): Apples? What the #$%^!
Fortunately for you, me, and the rest of the world’s population that speaks English (I assume you speak it if you can read this), the modern trend in English is to make up new words. I propose using this modern trend to help minimize confusion concerning the most confusing of words: love.
I initially thought that some sort of numeric system would be best. You know, Love 1 would be the love between a man and wife, Love 2 would be the love between brothers, Love 4.521 would be the love of overweight Caucasian men for poodles name Buffy, and so forth. This idea didn’t last long because anything involving numbers eventually degrades into math. I envisioned some twenty year old math major doing multivariable differential equations to determine why Kelly from second period wouldn’t go to coffee with him. For the sake of him, and all those like him, I cannot in good conscience recommend a numeric love-naming convention.
The following is the official, Tom endorsed, new love-naming convention:
Flove (long O): to be used to describe the love of a parent for a child or a sibling for another. Usage: “Billy, tell your brother you flove him.”
Romove (row-ove): to be used to describe the love of a man for a woman in a romantic sense and visa versa. Usage: “Billy, I romove you more than Juliet romoviefied Romeo.”
Grep: to be used to describe the affection one has for one’s pet. Usage: “I used to think I just liked Fido. But now I know that I truly grep him. He’s grepificated by me like no other dog.”
Foodove: to be used to describe affection for food products. Usage: “Oooh! Apples! I foodove apples!” (Think of the pain this simple word could have saved Ben.)
Confusificationifiedicate: to be used to describe the feeling associated with liking someone more than a friend but maybe not as much as “more than a friend” usually means because, you know, things are complicated and sometimes if feels like… but other times it feels so totally… you know? Usage: “Wanda, I so confisificationifiedicate you that I don’t know which way up is anymore.”
This is only a partial list, but I believe it’s obvious the kind of simplification that it would bring to the world.
Comments
Seem to have missed out Agape tho' (or nearest equivalent) - otherwise, its a perfect thesis.