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Talking about love: “I love you” and “Love you” lessons

03 April 2018 39

A human being is almost always a story of love (or its absence). Our love knowledge we get experiencing different feelings and emotions from communicating other people and contemplating various forms of art. Cinematography can become a good teacher of love indeed. From loads of movies with a romantic plot, we get a particular image of love relations. The phrase “I love you” is always sounding in such kind of movies. And we expect to hear these words from our beloved in real life. I also wait to hear this phrase and have a little question. Is hearing “Love you” instead of “I love you” from my boyfriend should really bother me? Or maybe it’s OK, that he doesn’t speak to me the words of love like Ryan Gosling’s character from “Notebook”.  

Is there any difference between these so resembling phrases? Let’s try to catch up.

“I looove you!” movie experience

We all remember one of the funniest episodes from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Cunning Kevin McCallister obliges the spectators to laugh to tears using his “Angels with filthy souls” trick.

“Get down on your knees and tell me you love me”, says the gangster with a Tommy gun. Then the hotel staff, trying to convince him in total admiration, stands on knees right behind the door and swears in love. “I loooove you”, the hotel workers solemnly stretch the word “love”. Kevin bursts into a laugh, and so do we.

From this context, we see that the phrase “I love you” has a deep emotional load. These are words of revelation, of confession, signalizing of strong affection. Basically, in movies, we hear the words “I love you” in romantic scenes. It can be as well teenage love or grown-ups relationship, happy marriage episodes or “broken heart” stories. Love triangles, resort affairs and everything connected with relationships is all about “I love you”.

But not only romance is the point. Family relationships between parents and children, brothers and sisters, close relatives and dearest friends also include “I love you” phrase.

The same - in life. We use these three words to underline the strong affection to a person. When we simply can’t imagine our lives without him/her, when our emotional connection is too deep and significant, we say “I love you”, trying to reveal our attitude. We usually say it face to face to underline the intimacy of our confession.

“Love you” - brief and exact

“Love you” is like saying “I love you”, but something is missing. What did we lose excluding pronoun? Maybe some kind of personal involvement in the situation?

The phrase “love you” feels a little bit cut. But we can find an extra sense in this matter. Informal casual communication usually intends this kind of shortness in sentences. So instead of using long grammatically constructed phrases, we tend to use shorter equivalents. It’s not about proving the pronoun “I” is too long, it’s about the relevance of this word in different situations.

We say “love you” as a routine phrase. Like saying goodbye to our children going to school in the morning or to a husband leaving for a job. We say “love you” dating our friends, calling them on a phone or writing them an SMS. So it’s a suitable form of casual communication both in life and Internet.

Sometimes this phrase refers to our pets. Imagine you are stroking your labrador puppy and saying solemnly and confident “I love you”. What a nonsense! Just tickle it behind the ear and utter jolly “love you”.

“I love you” VS “love you”

The main point: both phrases involve at least two people and the emotional connection between them. If the phrase “I love you” regards only to the dearest people in our life, with whom we have deep affection, “love you” we can say to a wider circle of mates (or even pets).

“Love you” is more informal and casual, perfect for e-mailing and SMS. You can use this phrase frequently. Instead of “goodbye”, say “love you” and that will be OK. We recommend using “I love you” every now and then. Just to conserve the genuine meaning of this phrase of showing sincere filling to your beloved ones.

There is also one tip about distinguishing “I love you” and “love you”. The intonation, the situation and the person addressing these words to you is the key to understanding what kind of love is hidden in the phrase.

Finding a difference between “I love you” and “love you” I must confess, I’m a little bit disappointed. Wanting to have everything from life, I prefer to hear “I love you” from time to time. Maybe it’s time to have a lexicology lesson with my boyfriend?

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