Love - Suki, Ai, Koi 好き, 愛, 恋

To say "I love you" in Japanese it's easy: just say aishiteru 愛してる... or was it aishiteiru 愛している? I mean, "love" in Japanese is ai 愛, right? Or was it koi 恋? Wait. What's the difference between ai and koi? What about the word suki 好き? You can say you like someone in Japanese with that word too, right? What's the meaning of all this?

Alright. Love is a complicated matter and love in Japanese is, well, also complicated, but not that much. First things first.

The word ai 愛 does in fact, and quite literally, mean "love" in Japanese. And the phrase anata wo aishiteru 貴方を愛してる is how you say "I love you." in Japanese. I mean, it's one of the ways to say "I love you" in Japanese.

Aishiteru and Aishiteiru

I just said ai 愛 means "love," so what about aishiteru 愛してる? It means "to love." As a verb.

The word ai is a noun, a "thing." To say you "do a thing" in Japanese you need the suru verb. So whatever it is, whatever-suru means you do it. And shiteru is merely a conjugation of the suru verb meaning you're currently "doing" it and not just "do" it.

Now, the difference between shiteru and shiteiru. Are they different conjugations? Not really. The shiteru, a "word without the i," or i nuki kotoba い抜き言葉, is just a casual way of saying shiteiru している with the i. (source: “している”　“してる”　の違い)

So aishiteiru is the proper, formal way to say "I love you", while aishiteru is the more casual way, which is why you'll see aishiteru more often than aishiteiru. Some of the actual conjugations of ai suru, by the way, are these:

• ai shiteiru 愛している
  aishiteiru 愛している
  ai shiteru 愛してる
  aishiteru 愛してる
  To be in love. (currently)
  To be loving.
• ai suru 愛する
  aisuru 愛する
  To love. (now or in the future)
• ai shita 愛した
  aishita 愛した
  To have loved. (in the past)

As you can see above, the space between ai and suru is meaningless, just a romaji thing, and doesn't actually exist in the Japanese text. Specially because Japanese doesn't use spaces between words like we do in English.

Ai and Koi

Now let's talk about the word koi 恋. When we speak about love, be it in Japanese, English or even Portuguese, my native tongue, we don't always use the same single word, but that doesn't mean ai and koi are exactly the same.

The main difference between ai and koi is that ai 愛 is about "feelings of love" while koi 恋 is about "romantic love." That didn't help? Well, ai is about pure feelings while koi is about passion or romantic partners. That didn't help either?

To have a better idea, some vocabulary with the kanji for 愛 and 恋, which carry their respective meanings:

• koibumi 恋文
  Love letter.
• koiuta 恋歌
  Love song.
• koigataki 恋敵
  Rival in love.

As you can see, these koi words are all about falling in love and getting yourself a girlfriend or boyfriend.

• aijou 愛情
  Affection.
• aishou 愛称
  Nickname.
• aiken 愛犬
  Beloved dog.
• aisha 愛車
  Beloved car.

Unless you're the kind of person that marries with your car or dog, I guess you might have noticed the difference by now. By the way, the aishou might look weird given it means "nickname", but it's really about those nicknames you give to your close friends and not just any nickname at all.

Another thing is that aijou can also mean "feelings of love," though not specifically romantic. You can have "feelings of love" for your children, your siblings, your parents, etc. Usually, the word kimochi 気持ち is used to talk about feelings when drama is involved.

• koibito 恋人
  Lover. (girlfriend, boyfriend, etc.)
• aijin 愛人
  Lover. The person I love. (husband, wife, etc.)

You'll find the word koibito used more by high-schoolers and teenagers. Love at first sight. Shounen and shoujo manga. On the other side, aijin would be used more in a sense of deeper feelings for each other. The word aijin may also refer to the "lovers" of someone as in an affair, or a "lover" as in a client in certain kinds of businesses. By the way, koibito doushi 恋人同士 is how you say two people are "both lovers" (though not necessarily of each other)

• ren'ai 恋愛
  Love.
• ren'ai taishou 恋愛対象
  Love target.
• ren'ai kekkon 恋愛結婚
  Love marriage.
• ren'ai kankei 恋愛関係
  Love relationship.
• ren'ai shousetsu 恋愛小説
  Love story. Romance story.

Above the word ren'ai 恋愛, made by putting both koi and ai together in a same word. Indeed it is what you get when pure feelings of love and passion are mixed together in a single word.

• koi suru 恋する
  koi wo suru 恋をする
  To be in love.
• ai to deau 愛と出逢う
  To find love
• chuunibyou demo koi ga shitai! 中二病でも恋がしたい！
  I want to love (koi ga shitai)
  despite (demo)
  [having] middle school 2nd year syndrome (chuugaku ninen byou)

In some cases, however, the two words can have a meaning too closer to each other, as ai can also be used to talk about ren'ai.

(don't mistake koi 恋, which is "love", with the homonym koi 鯉, which means "carp" or "koi fish" in Japanese. As seen in the joke above from the anime Hayate no Gotoku!! ハヤテのごとく！！)

Suki and Dai Suki

Now, the last word this article is about, suki 好き, and also dai suki 大好き, though suki an dai suki are practically the same.

In a word, suki means "like". It's a conjugation of the verb "to like," suku 好く, to its noun form. While the suku verb is rarely used, the noun suki shows up often, specially to say something is liked.

• keeki suki desu ケーキ好きです
  I like cake. (literally "cake is liked")
• suki na tabemono wa nandesuka? 好きな食べ物は何ですか?
  What's your favorite food? (suki used as an adjective)
• suki na hito wa dare desuka? 好きな人は誰ですか?
  Who do you like? (literally "who is the liked person")

As you can see, do not attempt to understand Japanese by translating it literally. It doesn't work and you'll understand even less than you did before trying it.

Since you can use suki to say you like things in general, you can also use suki to say you like people. Just like in English, when you say "I like you." Note that "I like you" isn't the same as "I am like you," it's the same English word with different meaning. The suki word only means liking things, not being like things.

• anata no koto suki desu 貴方のこと好きです
  kimi no koto suki desu 君のこと好きです
  anata no koto suki あなたのことすき
  kimi no koto suki きみのことすき
  I like you.

In the phrases above, both anata and kimi are words that mean "you" in Japanese. The word for "I", first person, is often omitted in Japanese, and even the copula desu isn't necessary and is commonly abbreviated.

• watashi wa anata to onaji 私は貴方と同じ
  I'm like you.
  I'm the same as you.

For completeness sake, above is how you say you're like someone.

The difference between suki and dai suki is that that the dai suki 大好き has this dai in front of it (obviously) and that means "large" or "greater" in Japanese. So, basically, dai suki is a bigger version of suki, meaning you like something very much.

• anata no koto daisuki desu 貴方のこと大好きです
  I like you a lot.
• anata no koto sukoshi suki 貴方のこと少し好き
  I like you a little.

Horeru

Did you think it was over? Nope! Bonus word!

The word horeru 惚れる in Japanese means "to fall in love with". This word is a lot more versatile than the words above, because it's a verb, which means it can be conjugated to say plenty of things.

• kanojo ni horeta 彼女に惚れた
  I fell in love with her.
• horete ii? 惚れていい？
  Is it okay to fall in love with you?
• horeteshimattanda! 惚れてしまったんだ！
  Fuck! I fell in love! (as it was a bad thing to do)
• suki na hito ni horeta riyuu 好きな人に惚れた理由
  The reason you fell you love with the person you like.

As you can see, horeru is a verb in Japanese with a meaning that can only be translated as a phrase in English. It works just like the verb moteru モテる, which means "to be popular", and its inflections become difficult to translate literally.

If you want to know more about this word, try watching the anime Katanagatari 刀語, you'll notice that the word horeru is brought up in anime by Shichika 七花 and Togame とがめ more often than the word "cheerio."