# Aşk=Sevgi=Love?



## /.:TürK:.\

Is there any specific word for ''aşk'' in English?
Aşk and sevgi are very different but as far as i know people use same word ''love'' for both of them.There must be a word that i dont know...


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## Mindlevery

Hello! 
I cannot answer your question actually, but I have one myself...(sorry for that )

Can you tell me what's the difference between those words, aşk and sevgi?
I'm interested.
Please! )


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## ateaofimdomar

Aşk is romantic love, something you feel for your girlfriend/boyfriend, for example, the thing that in Greek we call Eros. Sevgi is something you may feel for a friend.
Turk, there is no equivalent in English, I know because I was looking to translate the same difference that exists in Greek; we say eros and agape respectively, and even though both words exist in English, they are not common, everyday speech.

I think that English speakers tend to use "love" for both, except when they say "in love with sb", which means "birine âşık".


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## Mindlevery

Thanks! As for me question answered.


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## Volcano

*If we want to separate love and sevgi,we can say love for aşk,affection for sevgi*


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## /.:TürK:.\

Ohh, thats just unbelievable...
In our culture; aşk and sevgi are obviously different things.Back to our history, in Ottoman Empire , literature art had a great run.Especially poetry.There was a special kind of poetry type called ''Divan Edebiyatı''.Which i may translate as ''Court Literature''.And that poetry type was about love and spiritual things...
If we cant set apart aşk and sevgi , lots of poetries may lose their meanings!
Thanks God we have two different words in Turkish


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## avok

You can also feel "aşk" for "God" in as Sufis do. i.e. Divine Love.  "Aşk" is a part of the Ottoman Culture and the Sufis. You need to feel "aşk" for God to reach himself/herself so you shall become "Whole" and eventually you 'll become God. And if you feel "aşk" for a human being that means you two become "whole" / "one", you complete each other. 

Quote:





> The Creator, the Almighty One who is the only Being (_wujud_) is alone the source of Love Himself. He loves Himself. He embraces Himself. He adores Himself. He is the one who loves and is loved among the whole of creation. Love is He alone. The lover who has already perfected in his love in the end understands he loves the only Being, the Creator; what he loves is indeed the Almighty One, God, in every existent thing. In the initial stages the lover finds Him within himself. He loves Him within himself; while loving himself, the lover at the same time loves Him. He is the one who has created every thing out of love. Therefore, every creature carries traces of love within themselves. If someone finds love within creation, then he finds Truth (_Haqq_) who has created all things out of His love, as the aim of Truth’s creation is only Love.


 

No surprise that European Languages don't have this kind of seperation. I speak several languages and Turkish is the only one that has this "aşk" / "sevgi" seperation. The others use the same word for both: Love, Amour, Amor etc..


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## Mindlevery

In Hungarian exists a word for romantic love and this is "szerelem", while the love we feel for friends, family etc. is "szeretet".


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## ateaofimdomar

avok said:


> I speak several languages and Turkish is the only one that has this "aşk" / "sevgi" seperation. The others use the same word for both: Love, Amour, Amor etc..


 
I've noticed the same thing. From all the languages I speak, apart from Greek of course, only Turkish makes the same dinstinction. It would be very interesting to take this question to the all languages forum and try to find out if there other languages that make the distinction.



avok said:


> You can also feel "aşk" for "God" in as Sufis do. i.e. Divine Love. "Aşk" is a part of the Ottoman Culture and the Sufis. You need to feel "aşk" for God to reach himself/herself so you shall become "Whole" and eventually you 'll become God. And if you feel "aşk" for a human being that means you two become "whole" / "one", you complete each other.


 
That's very interesting! It reminds me of Plato's theory about eros.



			
				wikipedia said:
			
		

> Plato also said Eros helps the soul recall knowledge of beauty, and contributes to an understanding of spiritual truth. Lovers and philosophers are all inspired to tell the truth by eros, the god of love.


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## /.:TürK:.\

Yes, that would be really amazing but how can we ask them a word that never existed in their minds?


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## avok

Ateaofimdomar, then you may want to read that too 

Quote:



> Love (_‘ishq_)
> 
> In a strikingly ecstatic passage in his _Alchemy of Happiness_ (_Kimiya-yi sa‘adat_), al-Ghazali considers _‘ishq_ as that which arises in the fourth and final stage of practicing the remembrance of God (_dhikr_). This fourth stage occurs when
> the object of the remembrance dominates the heart (and that object is God-Haqq – not the remembrance)…. This is the result of one-pointed love (_mahabbat-i mufrad_), which is called “intense love” (_‘ishq_). The heart of the lover who is burning with love (_‘ashiq-i garmraw_) is always with the Beloved (_ma’shuq_). It might even occur that on account of the intense degree of preoccupation of the heart with the Beloved, the name of the Beloved may be forgotten. When one becomes so drowned and forgets one’s self and everything – except God (Haqq) –one reaches the beginning of the path of Tasawwuf. Sufis call this condition “passing away” (_fana’_) and “not existing” (_nisti_); meaning that as a result of the remembrance of God, everything has become non-existent; and such a person also has become non-existent, anamely the one who has forgotten his or her self.​


 
And also ishq and ashik (aşık) and Yunus Emre

Plato is "Eflatun" in our speech and he had immense influence on the Philosophy of Islam.


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## ateaofimdomar

Hi, Avok, and thanks for the links, they are very interesting! I know about Yunus Emre, but unfortunately my Turkish is not that good yet to allow me to read from the original


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## avok

But the link I provided is in English 

For example, this poem "lovers don't die" is about the use of "love" in Sufi culture  Though translated it loses all its glory


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## jimmy03

I think "aşk" is about to see your inside,look inside yours,and ask question with your soul what you are doing?


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## yasemin

Well, the discussion seems to have got real deep  I only wanted to make a small correction. It is not totally correct that the differentiation between what we call aşk and sevgi in Turkish does not exist at all in European language (and what is a european language?? In Europe, there are not only latin-origined and germanic languages but also Greek and Uralic languages such as Hungarian. Where would we put Celtic language?). For example, in Italian you would say _ti amo_ to your lover, i.e. to the person that you are in romantic love  with, and _ti voglio bene_ to your lover OR anyone else to indicate that you are affectionate to that particular person. The same difference in way of saying can be observed also in Spanish (te amo and te quiero, respectively). These are the only European languages that I'm familiar to, but I believe that also in Portuguese and French there might exist such a feature, given that these languages all belong to the same linguistic family. 
Within the same framework, there also some languages where you can express your love in more than even two words. You can check love in Wikipedia for a very superficial list of the words used in different languages.
Anyways, I think the problems is that we are talking to each other in English....


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## kalamazoo

There are lots of ways you can distinguish different kinds of feelings in English also!   Yes, you can say "I love my boyfriend" or "I love flowers" but no one wiill think it's the same feeling in either case.  If you want or need to be more exact, there are many many ways to distinguish different shades of passion or affection (as I am sure there are in most languages).


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## yasemin

Thank you kalamazoo,
This information could be given only by a native speaker. Could you please give us several examples for this?


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## ateaofimdomar

kalamazoo said:


> There are lots of ways you can distinguish different kinds of feelings in English also! Yes, you can say "I love my boyfriend" or "I love flowers" but no one wiill think it's the same feeling in either case. If you want or need to be more exact, there are many many ways to distinguish different shades of passion or affection (as I am sure there are in most languages).


 
Yes, but I believe the original question was about two separate words (like the words agape and eros), not about various ways to express one's feelings. I mean to say that many languages may be able to tell the difference between romantic/sexual love and love for everything else, but (in this case in English) are there two distinct *nouns *describing the feeling itself or is there just love?


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## kalamazoo

Yes, I agree there are not two distinct words for two types of "love" in English. I was thinking of the Spanish and Italian examples given by Yasemin above, which show that you can differentiate these ideas in Spanish and Italian, although the examples don't actually use two different words for "love."  You could construct similar examples in English as well.  So in English (and in Spanish and Italian as far as I know) there are not two distinct words for two different kinds of love, although there are ways to express a distinction using other words. (For example, saying "I am in love with Joe" is almost always going to imply romantic love, not just friendly affection.)


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## yasemin

Vallahi, Kalamazoo, you are really right that I meant there can be differentiation in the way of saying so as to make us understand there is a difference in the feeling, rather than distinct words. But I still believe that Latin languages are stronger than English in this sense, because they are one step ahead in the specialization of these ways, i.e., they say I love you to someone they love romantically and (kind of) I want good of you to someone they love in a friendly manner. 
Of course, it is absolutely not the case that some languages score off the others  All languages have their own ways to make it clear, even intonation and some gestures contribute to it.


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## kalamazoo

Dogru soyluyorsun, Yasemin!  In all languages, there will be some way to tell someone that you are madly in love with them!

( I will say as an English speaker, it is sometimes hard to understand in Spanish whether "lo quiero" means "I love him" or "I like him.")


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## tulpan

/.:TürK:.\ said:


> Is there any specific word for ''aşk'' in English?
> Aşk and sevgi are very different but as far as i know people use same word ''love'' for both of them.There must be a word that i dont know...


 

Aşk= Love (noun), a *strong* feel of affection

Tabiata aşık,
He/she is in love with nature

Eşine aşık, 
He /(she) is in love with his wife /(her husband).

Köpeklere aşık,
He/she is in love with dogs

Sevgi=liking (in some cases it means even attention)(noun)

Çiçekler sevgi ister (Flowers need attention)

Bir annenin çocuğuna duyduğu sevgi (a mother's liking (affection) for her child)

Caza karşı geliştirdiği sevgi (Liking she/he has developed for jazz)


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## kalamazoo

Well, my Turkish isn't very good and my Swedish is non-existent, but let me chime in with some suggestions regarding English!

"In love with" is pretty specific for a rather passionate romantic attachment to a person. You can say "He is still in love with his wife"  although "he loves his wife" would mean about the same.  It sounds very strange, though, to say that someone is "in love with dogs."  You would say "He loves dogs" or, more colloquially, "He is crazy about dogs."  As far as nature, "he loves nature" is the best translatiion.

Getting to "sevgi" I would suggest the following:
Flowers need attention - sounds okay.

As to the mother, "affection" is much better than "liking" which sounds strange. Or just a mother's "love" for her child.

Jazz: I would suggest a "taste" he has developed for jazz as the most idiomatic translation.


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## tulpan

kalamazoo said:


> Well, my Turkish isn't very good and my Swedish is non-existent, but let me chime in with some suggestions regarding English!
> 
> "In love with" is pretty specific for a rather passionate romantic attachment to a person. You can say "He is still in love with his wife" although "he loves his wife" would mean about the same. It sounds very strange, though, to say that someone is "in love with dogs." You would say "He loves dogs" or, more colloquially, "He is crazy about dogs." As far as nature, "he loves nature" is the best translatiion.
> 
> Getting to "sevgi" I would suggest the following:
> Flowers need attention - sounds okay.
> 
> As to the mother, "affection" is much better than "liking" which sounds strange. Or just a mother's "love" for her child.
> 
> Jazz: I would suggest a "taste" he has developed for jazz as the most idiomatic translation.


 
English is not my mother tongue but I was just translating from Turkish to English to make people who learn TURKISH to understand the words sevgi and aşk easier. My point there was to show that aşk (love) in Turkish can be used for dogs, plants or what so ever when you feel something very strong...

In Turkish you can be in LOVE with dogs, cats or anything which gives you a passionate feeling...


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## kalamazoo

Hi Tulpan. Your post was very helpful in clarifying sevgi and ask.  I was just trying to help out with the English translations a little. No criticisms intended. Kusura bakma!


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