Big Love, Little Love

The Eskimo-Aleut language family has many, many words and phrases to describe snow. (https://readable.com/blog/do-inuits-really-have-50-words-for-snow/) English has only one word for love. One word for friend or acquaintance. We ask these few words to describe a range of emotions and relationships.
      So, we say I love my shoes, I love this food, I love you, I love god/goddess, I love the world. And so on. It is interesting to me that this one word is supposed to encompass the many shades of love. I suppose that at times we should say that I really like my shoes, really like this food instead. But many of us, including me if I'm honest, say I love as a default instead of using a word that is closer in meaning to what we truly mean.
      It also strikes me that it also true on the opposite end of the emotional scale. We'll readily say that we hate something or someone when we really mean we dislike that something or someone. The English language is often not very nuanced and often confusing. (Words with the same spelling with different meanings. Words with the same spelling pronounced differently for present and past tense. Words with multiple different meanings.)
     Other languages are more nuanced. I have read a number of books by Neil Douglas-Klotz. He writes that Arabic, Aramaic and Hebrew have layers of meaning--maybe it would be better to say emanations of meaning. Hmm. I wonder how the English speaking world view would change if English were more nuanced. I suppose it's merely idle conjecture because the language is what it is.

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The first photograph is by Andrik Langfield and the 2nd by Brigitte Tohm. I found them on unsplash.com.

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