Welcome back to the Learn English podcast, the podcast teaching English in context so you can learn naturally.
On today's episode, we are celebrating love, and that is because it is going to be Valentine's Day at the end of this week.
Because it is Valentine's Day, we want to celebrate the week.
We want to talk about love and the different types of love and the different synonyms for love.
What do they mean? What are the differences?
How do you know when to use one word versus the other?
Don't worry, we are going to cover all of this on today's episode to, of course, help you with your English fluency and vocabulary.
So if you're ready to love this episode, then follow along because we're about to begin.
Before we get started, I want to remind you to look in the description of this podcast episode and on our previous podcast episodes.
There you will find a list of the words and phrases that I use so you can help build your English vocabulary.
Now let's talk about love.
Last year I did an episode on the history and traditions of Valentine's Day.
I will leave an i -card if you're watching on YouTube and of course I would recommend watching that video to learn more about the traditions and further build your English vocabulary.
But on today's episode we're specifically going to discuss how to talk about love in English.
When we say the word love or that we love something, we can be referring to a number of different types of love.
Of course, there is the romantic love, the passionate love when you are in some type of romantic relationship with someone.
You might also be talking about a friendly type of love.
This is also called platonic love and it is the love you have for your friends or family members.
Or you might also just be talking about your love for a particular thing.
The last two types of love are not romantic even though we use the same word and the same sentence structure.
For example, I might say that I love Star Wars.
I love pizza. I love my dog.
I love my best friend.
Now all of those are true, but none of those are referring to a romantic type of love.
They are talking about my enjoyment of something like Star Wars or pizza, or they're talking about the friendly companion type of love when I'm talking about my dog or my best friend.
However, if I wanted to talk about my romantic relationship, I would still use the same sentence structure.
It's just the thing that I love would change.
For example, if I was someone who was married, I could say that I love my husband.
If I was engaged, I could say that I love my fiancé.
That would be a romantic type of love, but as you can see, the sentence structure and the verb is the same.
Now, if you want to make it very obvious that you are talking about a romantic type of love, what you can do is you can add the word with.
When you do that, you change the meaning from possibly a friendly type of love to a romantic type of love.
There is no doubt when you use this type of sentence structure.
For example, I might say that I love a particular person.
Let's say that this person's name is Luke.
I might say, I love Luke.
Now, you might not know my relationship with Luke.
Maybe Luke is a really good friend.
Maybe Luke is the name of my dog.
You can't really tell from that particular sentence structure.
However, if I say, I am in love with Luke, you know for a fact that Luke is someone that I either have a romantic relationship with or someone that I want to have a romantic relationship with.
There is no doubt about the type of love that I am discussing.
I am not talking about someone I want to be friends with.
I am definitely talking about someone I want to be in a relationship with, dating, engaged to, or married to.
You can also hear this when people realize that they don't want to be in a romantic relationship with someone.
let's say that i'm talking to you and we're still talking about this person who is named luke i might say that i love luke but i'm not in love with luke what that means is that i don't want to be in a romantic relationship with luke because i am not in love with him but i care about him i want the best
for him because I love him.
And that particular type of saying in that particular sentence structure, it is helping the listener differentiate what the speaker means.
When you are in the beginning stages of a relationship, you might not want to use the word love.
The word love, of course, has a very important meaning.
It means a lot to people when they say that they love each other so you might want to use something that's a little bit less forceful especially if you're just getting to know a person in that case you would use the word like I like Luke which means I'm getting to know this person maybe I'm wanting
to start a relationship with them but we're not at the point where I can really say that I love them or I'm in love with them Now just like love, the word like has a very similar type issue because it can be used when you are talking about things that are not romantic.
Again, I can say that I like pizza, I like Star Wars, I like my dog.
Those are all true.
Again, in all of those cases, I'm not talking about a romantic type of relationship.
Unlike love though, we are not going to use the word with with the word like.
There is no such thing as being in like with someone.
That is extremely odd and you never ever want to say that.
You can only ever say that you like someone, never that you're in like or that you're in like with someone.
Those are incredibly odd.
You never ever want to say those.
There are some other words that are synonyms for love that mean maybe slightly different things and are used in different contexts.
Just like our previous examples, you really have to listen to the context to fully understand what someone is saying.
The first word is adore and adore has in general about two main categories of uses.
One is when you talk about something that brings you joy and one is more of a romantic type of affection for someone or love for someone.
Now when we talk about a door and in the terms of it bringing us happiness this could be a particular activity that makes you really happy or it could be a person.
Now if it's a person it's usually somebody who's really cute it's probably like a child or a baby and let's go through some examples to really understand this particular usage.
Let's say that I have a niece who was just born and she's a very small baby and I love spending time with her.
I love her and I just love spending time with her because she makes me so happy and I love seeing her little face.
I could say that I adore my niece.
I love my niece and she brings me happiness when I am around her.
I could also say the same thing about my dog.
I love my dog. My dog makes me really happy every day.
So I can say that I adore my dog.
I can also say this about any activity.
I enjoy teaching English.
It makes me really happy.
I enjoy doing this podcast and doing online lessons with students.
So I can say that I adore my teaching job.
Those are all correct uses of the word adore and all of those are of course in a non -romantic context.
Now when you use the word in a romantic context when you're talking about someone that you're in love with them and saying that you adore them that is very forceful.
That is very passionate.
You are saying that you extremely love someone and that you just love everything about them.
This is a very strong word.
Because it is so forceful, you usually don't say this to someone.
I'm not usually going to tell someone that I'm in a relationship with that I adore them.
That is a little bit odd.
Of course, I'm from the United States.
I'm from Southern California and that is my particular context for this word.
It might be different in other countries But I can say from my experience, I have never heard someone say this to someone else when they're in a romantic relationship.
Instead, I've heard this when someone is talking about a person who is in a relationship, talking about a third person.
If you have seen the American version of The Office, then you know the characters Jim and Pam.
If you haven't seen the show, I would recommend it.
It's a great way to learn English and get a little bit of that American type of humor because it is one of the most popular shows in the last two decades, I would say.
Everyone I know has seen it, so I would recommend it if you haven't.
But if you haven't, let's just do a quick summary of these two characters.
There is Pam and Jim.
They are co -workers and they definitely like each other, but they don't start a relationship with each other and it takes a number of years before they begin dating.
Now, once they do start dating, it is very obvious that they are in love with each other.
They are very much in love.
They love being together and we can say that they adore each other.
That word adore is really emphasizing how much in love with each other they are.
In this case, we are not Pam or Jim.
These are characters that we're talking about.
That means that they are the third person.
They're the couple that we're talking about.
So we can use that word adore.
Another word that you will hear is devoted.
Now devoted means that this is someone who is very much involved and very dedicated to a particular person or a particular thing.
Let's do some examples so it makes a little bit more sense.
If someone is devoted to a particular thing, maybe their job, that means that they're very loyal to their job.
They're never going to leave.
They love doing it and they are very dedicated.
They work really, really hard.
Maybe you know someone like this.
Maybe one of your family members or your friends is devoted to their job and you can use that word You also usually hear it when you are talking about someone else So you wouldn't say it to someone you wouldn't say that i'm devoted to you That seems a little bit odd, but you would say that someone is devoted
to someone else So I can say if we're talking about the office that jim is devoted to pam He really loves Pam.
He's never going to leave her side.
He's going to be with her for the rest of his life.
You also sadly usually hear this when someone is injured in an accident or maybe dies unexpectedly.
When people are talking about the person who has suffered some sort of tragedy, they can use this word devoted to really show what a good person they were and how emphasize how sad it was that they got injured or were killed by something.
For example, you will usually hear this at a funeral when someone does die.
You'll hear this on the news when someone is being described in a certain way.
And if you ever go to a cemetery, you will see this word on tombstones because it is trying to emphasize the kind of person that the deceased person was.
For example we're going to go back to our imaginary person Luke and let's say Luke was married and had children.
He had a family and he sadly unexpectedly passed away.
At his funeral we might hear the sentence Luke was a devoted husband and father.
That means that he loved his family, he loved his wife, he was very committed, very dedicated, and very loyal to them.
He always tried to do what was best for them.
I hope you enjoyed this episode.
I hope you learned something and some new words and the different contexts that these words can be used in.
So many of these words have multiple meanings and it's really important to try to listen and understand how they're being used so you can fully understand the meaning.
Of course, it's a little bit difficult at first, but the more times that you hear it, the more times that you practice listening to these words, the easier it gets.
Be sure to look at the description of this episode so you can find the vocabulary list and refer back to it, and hopefully start using these words in sentences yourself.
If you liked this episode, if you want more episodes like this in the future where we talk about different synonyms and how to use them, then please leave me a comment.
Tell me and let me know so I can plan more episodes like this.
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