# Love in many ways ?



## ThomasK

_[I do not speak Finnish, but I am interested in it as non-Indo-European language, and that's why I'd like to ask some questions about semantic/ etymological issues.]_

The Dutch word* 'lief' *can be translated in 5 ways, so it seems, but am I guessing right ? (Sorry about spelling, etc.)
- _lemp_(i): sweet, tender ? 
- _rakas_: simply referring to love as such?
- _mieltya_: the feeling, the softness of love ? 
- _hella _: reference to warmth ? 
- _suloinen _: sweet again ? 

I happened to come across some words in a poisonous love song ("Suloinen myrkynkeittäjä", not bad, musically, I'd say ;-):
_Jossa ei voi rakastaa
Kauas katoaa myrkynkeittäjä suloinen

where you can't even love
the sweet poisonmaker disappears away_


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## Finland

Hello!



ThomasK said:


> - _lemp_(i): sweet, tender ?
> - _rakas_: simply referring to love as such?
> - _mieltya_: the feeling, the softness of love ?
> - _hella _: reference to warmth ?
> - _suloinen _: sweet again ?



_lemp_i: love (the word is poetic or old-fashioned) 
- _rakas_: beloved, darling
- _mieltyä_: (this is a verb) start liking, grow fond of sth
- _hellä _: tender (as in a tender kiss, a tender touch etc.) 
- _suloinen _: sweet, precious, cute

HTH
S


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## ThomasK

Great, thanks !

The *lempi *--- can it also mean something like 'favorite'? I suppose your word resembles our medieval Dutch word 'minne'...
*mieltyä *--- i.e., falling in love (that's why there was _liikutttaa mieltyä_, I suppose: moviing into it)
*hellä *--- I see: how about a link with the heart and warmth (_hellaa_: oven ?)
*suloinen *--- can you interchange it with _hellä _?


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## Gavril

_lempi _can be prefixed to a word to mean “favorite”:

_Mikä sinun lempieläimesi on? _”What’s your favorite animal?”

_hellä _”tender” and _hella _“stove” seem to be unrelated: the first is considered to be of Baltic origin (NES, p.184) and the second of Germanic origin (NES, p.183).

I’m not sure about your last question re: _hellä _and _suloinen_. My English-Finnish-English dictionary suggests _hellä _and _lempeä _as translations for "tender".


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## Hakro

ThomasK said:


> *suloinen *--- can you interchange it with _hellä _?


If you can interchange _sweet_ with _tender_, then you can interchange _suloinen_ with _hellä_. (Except that in certain contexts _hellä_ means "sore".


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## ThomasK

It is quite striking that my hypotheses turn out to be the wildest guesses, and wrong guesses. 

My interest in all this is mainly due to the fact that I once discovered *väli*- as a/ one prefix that 'created' and thus linked quite some concepts that I from my Dutch point of view would not have considered related. Those were lexical eye-openers for me, in the sense that they made me see interesting links that I do not find in Dutch - but then all etymology reveals links that we did not realize, some quite funny, some quite interesting, etc. I suppose there are more like that, but I won't be venturing upon other similar hypotheses here, I'll keep them separate.


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