We often get questions like “How do I say I love you in Spanish?”, how do I say “You are beautiful in Spanish?” and so on!

Today, we learn about expressing our love for someone in Spanish! In this blog post, we’ll cover the most essential phrase ‘I love you’. You can find other phrases related to expressing your love for someone in our lesson 73 on Expressing Love

In today’s world, people dating or marrying each other across cultures is no longer an alien concept. In any cross-cultural relationship, it is extremely important to know each-other’s language! What better than knowing how to express your love in your partner’s language!

Let us start with saying I love you in Spanish

There are two verbs which refer to ‘love’ in Spanish

To love = amar

To love = querer (also used for ‘to want’)

Let us see when to use which

Amar vs. Querer (Or Amo vs. Quiero)

Usually ‘amar’ is used strictly for girlfriend/boyfriend or wife/husband – in a romantic context.

While, ‘querer’ may be used for expressing love for family members and friends also.

You can always use ‘querer’ for your partner as well, it is just a less intense form than ‘amar’.

Saying ‘I love you’ in Spanish

Most sentences have a subject, a verb, and an object. The subject is the one doing the task, the verb signifies the task being done, and the object is the one receiving the action.

Thus, in the phrase ‘I love you’

I = Subject (the one loving)

Love = Verb (the action)

You = Object (the one being loved)

Translating ‘You’

Since in ‘I love you’ – ‘you’ is the object it translates to ‘te’. We looked at direct objects in Lesson 40

Remember that, when ‘you’ is used as a object (is acted upon) it translates to ‘te’ and not ‘tú’ which is the subject (doer of the action) form of ‘you’.

Here, we are using ‘te‘ as we assume you’d be informal with your loved one

You (as direct object) = Te

Now let us look at the full phrase ‘I love you’ in Spanish

To love = Amar

Since, we want to say ‘I love’, we will conjugate ‘amar’

I = Yo

I love = (Yo) Amo – We can omit the ‘yo’

You = Te – Direct object

Now, we know that direct objects always come right before the conjugated verb

Thus,

I love you = (Yo) te amo

As we discussed, we can omit the ‘yo’ since it is obvious

I love you = Te amo

Form using ‘querer’

I love you = Te quiero

So now you know how to express your love in Spanish!

For more phrases on expressing love (like: do you love me?, I miss you, I love Lisa, I don’t love you, and more), you can go to: Lesson 73 | Expressing Love in Spanish



For phrases on asking someone out in Spanish, you can go to: Lesson 69 | Asking someone out on a date in Spanish

