In a 2008 survey of 1,459 multilingual adults, the linguist Jean-Marc Dewaele found that most respondents felt the phrase “I love you” had its greatest emotional weight in their first language. The respondents had 77 different first languages among them. That result applies to anyone dating abroad in a borrowed language, because a partner can mean a second-language compliment completely and still feel less of it while saying it.
Emotional Weight in a Second Language
Dewaele’s results varied by respondent. The weight of the phrase in a later language rose with the speaker’s proficiency and with the share of the person’s social life conducted in that language. People who learned the language earlier in life also rated it higher. A smaller group rated the phrase strongest in a language learned later, and some rated their first and later languages equally. A person who studied French at school and uses it on holiday is in a very different position from someone who has lived in Lyon for 10 years and argues with landlords in French.
In the first weeks of dating abroad, both people are often speaking a language neither of them grew up with, usually English. Dewaele links the reduced weight to how and where a language was acquired, so an affectionate line that sounds flat is weak evidence about the speaker’s feelings. A partner with limited English may be far more expressive in a first language that the other person cannot yet follow.
Private Vocabulary in Lingua Franca Couples
In a 2017 doctoral study at the University of Helsinki, Kaisa Pietikäinen recorded 24 hours and 15 minutes of everyday conversation between 7 couples in 4 countries who used English as their shared second language. The couples drew on every language either partner knew and developed what the study calls a “couple tongue,” in which switching between languages became habit.
The same study found that closeness helped comprehension and also produced mistakes, because partners expected to be understood automatically. The couples responded by checking meaning early, and some used drawings or imitated sounds when words ran out. Speakers in institutional settings tend to let small confusions pass, while the couples in the study stopped and asked for clarification.
In the recorded arguments, a noticeable silence usually marked strong opposition or offense taken. For a couple with limited shared vocabulary, a pause in an argument is information, and it deserves a direct question about what the other person meant.
A new couple abroad can adopt the same habit by asking again whenever a sentence is unclear and expecting the other person to do the same.
Relationship Expectations Across a Language Gap
A pair of adults with only a few shared words still need to agree on what kind of relationship they are in. A holiday romance with a fixed end date, a slow courtship that continues by video call after the trip, and a specific dynamic such as a pay pig pairing each come with separate expectations about contact and commitment.
Those expectations are hard to state in a second language and easy to misread. A short written summary, read by both people in each language, settles more than a long conversation held in fragments.
Translation Tools and Their Error Rates
Machine translation is the default fallback for couples without a common language, and its accuracy depends heavily on the language pair. A 2021 study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine tested Google Translate on 20 common emergency department discharge instructions in 7 languages. The overall meaning was retained in 82.5% of translations. Spanish scored 94% and Tagalog 90%, while Farsi scored 67.5% and Armenian 55%.
Medical instructions are more formal than dinner conversation, and the study did not test casual speech. The 39-point gap between Spanish and Armenian still tells a traveler how much to trust the tool in each place. In Madrid the tool will usually produce a usable translation, while in Yerevan close to half of its sentences may lose their meaning, and anything that matters, such as plans or health information, needs checking with a person who speaks both languages.
Decision Bias in a Foreign Tongue
In 2012, the psychologists Boaz Keysar, Sayuri Hayakawa, and Sun Gyu An reported in Psychological Science that the framing effect disappeared when participants considered choices in a foreign language. In their betting tasks, about 50% of participants accepted bets with a positive expected value when the bets were presented in their native language. About 70% accepted the same bets in a foreign language. The authors proposed that a foreign language gives the speaker emotional and cognitive distance from the decision.
The experiments measured bets and hypothetical scenarios. Applying them to dating is an inference, and a limited one. It is plausible for someone who argues or makes plans with a partner in a second language, since words in that language may have less emotional impact for the speaker than they would in a first language. Couples who notice that one partner seems detached during disagreements should ask if the second language explains part of it.
English Proficiency by Destination
The 2025 EF English Proficiency Index ranked 123 countries and territories using test results from 2.2 million people collected in 2024. The Netherlands placed first with a score of 624, followed by Croatia and Austria. Cambodia placed last, and Thailand and Saudi Arabia were also near the bottom of the table.
In the Netherlands, a first date can take place entirely in English with little lost. In Cambodia, the same date may depend on a translation tool from the first sentence, with the error rates that come with it.
Potential partners with good English are common in Vienna and Amsterdam and much less common in Bangkok, where English conversations more often depend on short phrases and gestures. The index measures people who chose to take an English test, who tend to be students and working adults, so it describes the educated urban population better than the country as a whole. The 2025 report also found that speaking was the weakest English skill in more than half of the countries measured, and a date depends on speaking far more than on reading.
20 Phrases Before the First Trip
A 2024 survey of 2,000 British adults found that 78% would be willing to learn a partner’s native language, and 26% named constant translating as the main difficulty of dating across a language barrier. Willingness is common among these respondents, and the time to act on it is before departure. Learn 20 phrases in the local language, including greetings, apologies, directions, and the words for yes and no, and say them aloud until they come without effort. A partner hears those phrases in the language where, by Dewaele’s measure, words have the most weight.
