Analyzing Love: The many linguistic expressions of 'the L word'

Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Layla and Majnun. The common theme in the stories of these people is passionate love.

Love is probably one of the most talked about, yet least understood emotions humans have. It is simply perplexing in every circumstance, no matter the time period or the nation.

It will come as no surprise how many different ways there are that one can linguistically express love.

Take a look at the word "love" in English. It comes from the old English word "lufu," which means affection or friendliness and comes from the Proto-Indo-European word "leubh," meaning to desire, to care or to love. That is how love is linguistically related to the word "libido," since they both share similar roots.

Now in English, there are probably only a handful of words that one associates with love, such as "desire", "affection", "attachment" or "longing". Love is a very specific emotion in the English language and does not have many parallels. This is certainly not the case in other languages.

In Arabic for example, there are nine different words for "love" -- each representing a different stage of passion. The highest level of love is called "Ishq", which is often associated with an ardent and selfless love that can only truly be reserved for God. Other oft-used words for love in Arabic include "Wudd" or "Hubb", which have the connotation of being less fervent kinds of love despite being very strong themselves.

Interestingly enough, "Ishq" can be seen in many different languages in which it also means love. This is because of Arabic's far-reaching influence. These languages include, but are not limited to, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Azerbaijani. Arabic isn't the only language that has a plethora of different words used to express love. Greek, a language that has largely influenced English, also uses a variety of words for love.

One Greek word that is similar to the word "Ishq" would the concept of "Agape love", which is spiritual in nature. Greek words that mean love, such as "eros" or "philia", have left a large impact on the English language, the former of which is the origin of the English word "eroticism" while the latter is often used as a suffix to describe one's love or affinity for something, such as "arachibutyrophilia" – the love of peanut butter sticking in one's mouth. "Storge," another Greek word, means natural affection, such as love for a sibling.

What is particularly fascinating is how semantics play such an important role in how society perceives a word. Because of society's affinity with the concept of love, modern culture has given it an almost fairy-tale quality when, in fact, that may not be the case at all.

Love is often thought of as the love that is shared between lovers in an intimate fashion, such as the love between Romeo and Juliet, but the notion of love as innocent or platonic is not nearly as popular.

It is usually secondary that people perceive love first and foremost as the love that is shared between two friends, the love that a parent feels for their child or a love that a person may have for God.

Today's society has seemingly distorted the concept of love and turned it into this sort of romantic and mysterious entity that has powers all on its own. Perhaps as a society, our collective experience with love would change if we just changed our perception of the word itself.