What the World Needs Now is Like, Sweet Like

Hello Everyone,

I remember having a conversation about language with my host father when I was studying abroad my junior year of college. In typical postprandial, Merlot-imbibing French fashion, he submitted his proposition with little to no warning but ample conviction: French has more words than English and therefore is a more precise language. (Incidentally, his “petites théories” ranged from the ideal number of wristwatches a respectable man should own -- seven --, to how, precisely, to stack the dishwasher.) Depending on my energy and homework levels, I would choose to listen or to debate. This night, I had to debate. Only a few days earlier, I had heard the exact opposite claim from my grammar professor, a formidable woman who rejected abortive attempts at the subjunctive with a blank stare and a baffled, “Ben... non!”, unable to comprehend that we still hadn’t absorbed her mother tongue.

Armed with Madame de Pous’ authoritative evidence, I entered the lexical fray: “I heard,” I said, sipping my wine to demonstrate my investment in the conversation, “that English has more words than French. Many more words.” He would have none of it, and so cut himself some cheese and proceeded to tell me that the extra words my professor claimed that English boasted were merely those relating to business, computers or science. Before I could mention that he was a businessman who used a computer everyday and was very interested in science, he was off, expounding on the merits of French. I suspect it is always difficult to reason with French men after dinner, but when you already have a communicative handicap, it’s sometimes wise to just sit back and enjoy the show. He might have dominated the conversation, but he wasn’t a domineering man. Debate is one of the vehicles through which friendship develops in France.

I am often reminded of this conversation when I think of the huge variety in the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary website offers a conservative estimate of over a quarter of a million words in the English language. It seems strange, then, that out of all these words at our disposal, the word “love” presides over such a range of definitions. It is well known that the Greeks have four words for “love,” each describing a different aspect of the concept. There’s eros, sexual, romantic love; philia, the love in a friendship; storge, familial, affectionate love; and agape, sacrificial or unconditional love, often attributed to God. Surely, English, in all its diversity, could have at least come up with equivalents for these variations.

There’s “like,” of course, but that does not help much either, as it differs from “love” not in specificity but in intensity. Together, “like” and “love” have been responsible for conversational gems such as these:

First grader #1: “I love chocolate milk!”
First grader #2: “Well, why don’t you marry it?”

and

Third grader #1, whispering secretly: “Do you like Brent?”
Third grader #2, averting eyes: “Yeah, he’s ok.”
Third grader #1, persistent: “No, I mean, do you like Brent?”
Third grader #2, blushing: “You mean like-like?”
Third grader #1, her battle already won: “Yeah, like, do you like-like him?”

But part of what I, uh . . . like, about these words is that they force us to clarify what we mean each time we use them. Their very inexactness makes us realize that love looks different depending on the context. It’s clear that when I say “I love graham crackers,” “I love being outside,” and “I love my friends,” I mean different things. But because we understand that love’s definition is so flexible, when its usage is less clear, we must ask questions either of others or of ourselves. How many movies and novels portray the protagonist wrestling with what kind of love he or she feels for a friend? Like or like-like? When someone claims to love the environment, how many times do we subconsciously ask “How much? What does that look like for you? Do you love the environment in the sense that you’ll sign a petition to get curbside recycling in place in your county, or in the sense that you take a walk in the woods each day?”

This linguistic parsing is a lot of mental work, and can cause serious misunderstandings between people. “Love” can sometimes mean such different things, I wonder about its usefulness. But there is also clearly something that connects the different meanings, a reason for uniting them all under the one umbrella word. In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis says, “Of course language is not an infallible guide, but it contains, with all its defects, a good deal of stored insight and experience.” It’s no mistake, then, that we can use the same verb when describing our feelings about a good song we’ve just heard as we do when describing our emotional connection to our family members. As Lewis says, “there is a continuity between our elementary likings for things and our loves for people.”

I can’t define the common denominator, and maybe no one can. Recently, though, I’ve found a metaphor that helps me see the situation more clearly. When pigment is mixed with a binder, it becomes paint. Depending on the kind of binder you use, the paint will be an entirely different medium. If you mix a yellow pigment with linseed oil, for example, you will get a yellow oil paint. If you mix that same yellow pigment with gum arabic, though, you will get a yellow watercolor paint. Oil and watercolor paintings are very different: they look different, smell different, have played different roles in the history of art -- they have different meanings. But they are united by the same pigments. I suspect that despite the various manifestations of the word “love” in the English language, there is an underlying commonality in the experiences we attempt to describe with it.

And now that I’ve offered my own “petite théorie,” I’ll go in search of some cheese and wine and ask for your thoughts. How helpful is the word “love”?

Have a good week,
Sarah/Mouse