I Love You 25 Ways

The First Completed Challenge! Yay!

This challenge was first posed by Chris Schulz, with further modifications by Ivy Stiles.

The Challenge: -Learn to say "I love you" in 25 previously unknown languages (5 European languages, 8 Asian, 7 African, and 5 native/aboriginal languages from NA/SA/Oceania?)





Now, I know Spanish and a smattering of a few other languages, so those were all out. I thought this was going to be really hard, but it was actually pretty fun. A Google search led me to this website: http://www.freelang.net/expressions/iloveyou.php# , but I couldn't just accept that based on blind faith in the internet. The rest of the morning was spent trying to verify certain translations, trying to figure out how to pronounce Welsh (which, as I once heard in a joke "has yet to discover vowels") and looking up all these obscure African languages. If you're curious, these are my notes:

5 European
Gaelic: Tá grá agam ort (literally: Is love at-me on-you / meaning: I love you) Pronounced: taa graw aggam orret
Catalan: t'estimo
Greek: Σ' αγαπώ (s'agapo)
Occitan (spoken in Southern France, Monaco) : t'aimi
Welsh: rydw i'n dy garu di (Rah-doo een duh gar-oo dee) (took an hour or more of google searching to find a video that verified the pronunciation of "Rydw i'n")

8 Asian
Madarin Chinese: wo ai ni (almost sounds like whiney)
Vietnamese: em yêu anh (woman to man) (sounds like em-yeee-ooo-an)
Urdu: main tumse mohabbat karti hoon (woman to man)
Farsi: dooset daram
Punjabi: mein tenu pyar kardi han (female speaker)
Azeri (Azerbaijan and Northwest Iran) :men seni sevirem (s dental like scythe, n dental)
Thai: ฉันรักคุณ (chan rak khun) - woman speaking
Malay: aku cinta padamu (ah-koo cheen-ta pah-dah-moo)

7 African
Swahili: nakupenda
Afrikaans: ek het jou lief
Eastern Arabic: Ana bahebbak (to a man)
Susu (Guinea, West Africa): ira fan ma
Afar (spoken in Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) ko kisinio (in IPA)
Ewe (Ghana, Togo, and Benin): me lonwo (lucked out, wiki says it has sounds for allophones)
Gbaya (contains several dialects, spoken in Central African Rep., Cameroon, Dem. Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo): mi ko me


5 Native/ Aboriginal
Cherokee: nayeli
Maori: kei te aroha au i a koe
Quechwa de Cuzco: munakuyki
Navajo: Ayor anosh'ni
Hawaiian: aloha wau iā ‘oe


Really the only thing that saved me was wikipedia and my extensive familiarity with IPA (the international phonetic alphabet, which is required of us in several classes at USC's School of Theatre) I welcome correction, and I'm aware that my accent slowly merges into the same accent I use for my Spanish. Oh, and in case any of you are sticklers for the rules: yes, I knew what the Greek looked like, but I didn't know how to pronounce it. I also knew that agapo was one of the three Greek concepts of love (why am I surrounded by all you Classics nerds? :P ) But I had never put the two concepts together. It was an "aha" moment for me.