Yesterday was February 14th, Valentine’s Day. Did you do something special with your loved one? Did you roll your eyes up and think “so cheesy”? Did you think “hey, it can never be a bad idea to celebrate love”?February seemed like the perfect month to explore LOVE and what it does to our brain, and therefore to our language learning!

Last week, we saw how love changes our brains (you can click if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet). Today, we’ll take a quick look at how love helps us learn languages and learn some words and phrases around love (in French and English), how about it?

Have you ever wondered why love makes language learning easier and faster? As we’ve seen in detail in the previous newsletter: love activates the same brain areas that make us feel good and motivated. Right there is a good starting point.

We don’t need a romantic partner to fall in love with a language. Sometimes, we just love the language itself — I’ve talked about my love for the Spanish language many times, so I know it’s true. We fall in love with how it sounds, how it works, what it tells us about its culture and history.

This passion for a language, for a person, for a culture or for a country makes the learning process more fun and positive. And when we have fun and are positive, we learn better. I talk about the magic of learning when you’re positive and happy in this newsletter and in this one (they’re super interesting and totally worth your while btw).

Positive emotions help us learn and remember better by increasing our focus, motivation, and engagement. These emotions also trigger the brain’s reward system, which releases dopamine and other chemicals that improve our mood and brain function. So, being happy and positive is not only good for our learning, but essential for it.

Need I say more? Well, maybe just a few words of love in French and English.

The language(s) of love

While I was contacting friends from different generations (to make sure I was up to date on different words and expressions) and searching online, I noticed something strange: there used to be a lot of different words and expressions around love. They’re almost all obsolete today and haven’t been replaced by new expressions, maybe a couple but not much more. Neither in French nor in English. A lot of oldies. Interesting.

Cute names couples call each other. Today, the ones we hear most are :

• in English: Babe, hon (short for honey)

• in French: Bébé, mon Coeur (my heart), mon Amour (my love), mon Chéri, ma Chérie

  
  

A couple of phrases related to love that I enjoyed translating:

• Love at first sight (litt: l’amour au premier regard) : le coup de foudre (litt: a hit of lightening)

• He’s head over heels in love with her (litt: la tête par dessus les talons): Il est raide dingue (litt: stiff crazy) d’elle

• Soulmate: âme sœur (litt: soul sister, even if it’s a guy, souls are females so they’re sisters)

• Un cœur d’artichaut (litt: an artichoke’s heart): someone who has the heart of an artichoke is someone who falls in love easily, quickly and thus…often!

• il est au 7eme ciel (litt: he’s at the 7th sky) : he’s on cloud 9

  
  

And some useful things to know about French and “to love”:

• French does not have a word for “I like” so they use “j’aime bien” (I like well)

• On the other hand, in French “j’adore” (I adore) is used to say that you really love something/someone but it’s not romantic love

  example: J’adore les newsletters de Feriel - I love Feriel’s newsletters

  
  

Want to learn French through love songs?

Here are a 2 playlists I made for you. I can’t say I love all the songs I added to the playlist but I tried to include different styles from the 50 or so past years.

French love songs - playlist made by me for you to learn French love vocabulary

English love songs - playlist made by me for you to learn English love vocabulary

I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and learned something new. Stay tuned for the next one, Love and Coaching. I wonder what that’s going to be about! Until then, keep loving and learning! 💕