Which Languages Are The Most Romantic?

There are many reasons why we choose to learn new languages. We might wish to broaden our horizons and make deeper connections with the places we travel to. Some might wish to learn a language for professional advancement or educational opportunities. For many of us, we learn a language because of the most powerful motivator of all – love.

An increasing number of us are falling in love across borders and languages. For example, the European Union’s Erasmus Exchange, which allows EU citizens to live and work in other countries, found that 27% of people on the scheme met their life partner while living abroad. If you’re dreaming of falling in love during your very own overseas adventure, you might be wondering which languages to start with. With that in mind, here is our totally subjective ranking of the most romantic languages on Earth.

French

Je t’aime – it is impossible not to feel romantic when one hears it, the way it rolls off the tongue and seems obligatory to say in a breathy whisper. Part of what makes French such a universally romantic language is the way that verbs are conjugated, as you can see from this expert guide to French conjugations. This allows words to flow like a lazy river, a feature that means that French lends itself very well to poetry and music. Perhaps you’re ready to head to Paris – the self-styled City of Love – to meet a beau of your very own. If so, now is the time to start working on your French language skills.

Russian

Language can be powerful, and Russian speakers know this well. Some people might not immediately associate Russian with whirlwind romance, but that’s just because they aren’t familiar with it. In the land that gave us Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, and Dostoevsky, the language is one that drips with a rich literary sentiment, so that every sentence evokes a sweeping epic romance. Russian can be difficult to master for native English speakers, especially since Russian speakers tend to use different parts of their mouths when talking. However, if you can get your tongue to make the right noises, you’ll unlock a true language of love.

Japanese

It is a mistake to assume that romance languages are the only languages of romance if you catch our drift. When assessing which languages are most conducive to picture-perfect romances, it would be a crime not to include Japanese on this list. The immense Japanese language contains a truly great expressive potential and a huge scale of nuances and subtleties that help to explain why Japan has produced such spellbinding poetry over the centuries. Some have said that the romantic quality of Japanese comes from the fact that all of the syllables are open, which means that they always end with a vowel. This gives the spoken language a kind of bouncy, airy, and lyrical cadence that can lead to some truly romantic encounters.

Italian

Italian as we know it today is quite literally the language of poetry. Modern Italian was based entirely on the writings of the acclaimed poet Dante Alighieri, which is exactly why it has that distinctive lyrical sing-song quality to it. It is also why so many Italian sentences already sound like a song since the language is structured to have a specific rhythm that so many first-time learners cannot help but find absolutely enchanting. If this wasn’t enough to motivate you, perhaps the heart-stopping sites of Italy, such as the Tiber River, the Florence Duomo, or the sun-kissed coves of Capri will be enough to get you to bust out your Italian dictionary.

This is our ranking of the most romantic languages in the world. What do you think?