# EN: I'm loving it



## Dang

How can I translate "I'm loving it" in French and explain it to my students ? This is the motto of McDonald's. And we usually teach no present continuous with the verbs love, like, hate, etc. Thanks.

*Moderator note*: multiple threads merged to create this one


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## cyberpedant

This is merely a phrase coined by McDonald's ad agency and, as far as I know, never had currency in colloquial English. I would teach it as an "error." I doubt it's translatable in French.


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## tom29

En argot ça donnerait quelque chose comme ça : Je kiff à donf !


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## Mikebissle

Je suis d'accord avec *cyberpedant*; la phrase est simplement quelque chose qu'était inventé par McDonald's, et ça n'était jamais un argot populaire.


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## pointvirgule

Dang said:


> How can I translate "I'm loving it" in French and explain it to my students ? This is the motto of McDonald's. And we usually teach no present continuous with the verbs love, like, hate, etc. Thanks.


You can translate the motto to "Je suis en train d'aimer ça", in order to show your students how meaningless corporate slogans are, then comment on the deleterious effects the advertising industry has on mass culture  and the Occidental civilization as a whole.


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## itka

What about "I've been loving you too long" (Otis Redding) if 





> And we usually teach no present continuous with the verbs love, like, hate, etc.


... which I didn't know !


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## cropje_jnr

The phrase used in McDonald's advertising in the French-speaking world is (from memory): _c'est ça que j'm_.

Which kind of just confirms how difficult it is to translate.

But apparently the "m" is supposed to evoke the McDonald's logo. Nifty.


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## tom29

La mémoire me revient, Cropje y était presque. En fait leur slogan est : "C'est tout ce que j'aime"


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## Welshie

itka said:


> What about "I've been loving you too long" (Otis Redding) if ... which I didn't know !



The present continuous with words such as love, like, want is sneaking into popular speech in British English. "love" is the main offender. Phrases like "What are you wanting?" are horrible English.


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## born in newyork

A previous thread on this topic:

are loving


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## geostan

cyberpedant said:


> This is merely a phrase coined by McDonald's ad agency and, as far as I know, never had currency in colloquial English. I would teach it as an "error." I doubt it's translatable in French.



I don't think it's an error. The TV show _Get Smart_ used it. The film _Dracula [is] Dead....And [is] Loving It_. is basically the present progressive form. 

If I were on holiday in the country near a stream, I might say after some time:
I've been here for a week and I'm really loving it. It means much the same thing as *I'm enjoying it*. It turns the verb almost into an action verb. Call it a semantic shift if you like.

But I wouldn't dwell on it with a class of students studying English as a foreign language.


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## Tim~!

I agree with geostan.

We often use these "stative verbs" in non-continuous forms ("I understand" rather than "I am understanding", even though it speaks about now rather than a regular, repeated action), but it's possible to switch to present continous.

An example that comes to mind is the following:
_
Where do you live?

I live in Paris._

However, one could answer _I'm living in Paris_ or _I'm living with my parents_, by which we understand that it's related purely to now, being only a temporary state.

Back to _I understand_.  I think it would be quite reasonable to answer someone who asks you about how you're getting on with French with _I'm understanding the subjunctive a bit more now_.  One may even stretch to saying _I'm loving the subjunctive this week!_, even if that is a bit of an unrealistic example.


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## cropje_jnr

tom29 said:


> La mémoire me revient, Cropje y était presque. En fait leur slogan est : "C'est tout ce que j'aime"


 
Right you are (I knew it was something alone those lines).

According to the link, the _m _replaces _aime_ in Canada.


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## Aoyama

> "C'est tout ce que j'aime"


Tout à fait . Maintenant, on peut attribuer la paternité de cette "formule" à Johnny Halliday (ou à son parolier) avec une chanson sur le blues "c'est la musique que j'aime", à propose de laquelle il dira, lors d'une interview (oublié quand) "le blues, c'est tout ce que j'aime" ...
Maintenant, "I'm loving it" dans le sens de "I'm crazy about it, I like it a lot", ne me semble pas bizarre, même si grammaticalement on a quelque chose d'inhabituel.
Pour 





> "I've been loving you too long"


 c'est différent, c'est un passé, pas la forme progressive au présent.


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## bidule17

I find the phrase from last year 's McDo 's ad a tad puzzling :what shade of meaning does it convey? Is it just a marketting coup, attracting potential consumers ' attention? We foreigners are taught that such verbs as "love,matter, mean, etc" are not to be used in the continuous forms. Thank you for helping me understand something really ...disquieting: the basis of English grammar is at stake! No less!


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## pmqs

Yes, isn't the french version 'c'est tout ce que j'aime' or something similar.

It's rare to say 'Im lovin' it'.  Although having said that, it is not uncommon to hear a compliment said like 'I'm loving those shoes', which doesn't suggest anything grammatically, just the phrase.

I can't think of anything in particular behind McDo's phrase.


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## Keith Bradford

Yes, but we don't tell foreigners the absolute truth, or where would the poetry go?

It is just permissible to say _I'm loving..._ or more commonly _I'm loving every minute of..._ to express the detailed enjoyment of a physical eperience. It's the equivalent of _I'm greatly enjoying_...


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## yuechu

"I love it" would be a lot more common than "I'm loving it", I would say. "I'm loving it" is quite slang, and the first time I heard it, I thought of the younger generations.

I personally have almost next said "I'm loving it".. nor heard it. It actually doesn't sound as proper as "I love it", so I agree with the ESL grammar textbooks on this one..

If I were to use it, it would be for music perhaps : "I'm loving this music" but.. for some reason, I never found it fitting to say "I'm loving it" for food. (especially with a pronoun instead of naming what it is that one loves). Just a catchy phrase for marketing purposes, in my opinion.


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## rbenham

This is a delicate issue. There is, of course, no reason not to use the present continuous with verbs like _love_, if it actually represents what you want to say.

If I say "I love pizza", then this describes a disposition. If, on the other hand, I normally look down on pizza, but consent to eat some out of some kind social obligation, and unexpectedly find myself enjoying it, I might describe this situation by saying "I'm actually eating pizza and loving it!" The thing is that it focuses attention on the moment and on the activity. If I just wanted to say that this was a particularly good pizza, I would say "I love this pizza!"

I don't know exactly when this McDonald's slogan came out; I only became aware of it on reading this thread a few minutes ago. But at least ten years ago, some vegan friends of my sister's opened a vegan restaurant called "Vego ... and love'n it!" I was appalled, but not by the use of the present continuous (or at least part of it). Rather, I was appalled by the spelling _love'n_ for _lovin'_. Worse, I think one was a school teacher before going into the restaurant business.

Really, I don't think there was ever anything wrong about the construction. Rather, I think it was rare because it was only appropriate in very limited circumstances. Now it seems to have become a bit of a fad. I am sure it will pass.


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## Aoyama

> It is just permissible to say _I'm loving..._ or more commonly _I'm loving every minute of..._ to express the detailed enjoyment of a physical experience. It's the equivalent of _I'm greatly enjoying_...


Right, right.
But come to think of it *I'm loving it *is in fact inspired by *I'm enjoying it *, which, in the case of the verb enjoy, wouldn't pose a problem.


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## Conrad Jay

Obviously an advertizing slogan likes to be a bit different, to draw attention. If you were eating in Macdonalds at the moment in question, and someone phone syou on your mobile to ask how it was going, "I'm loving it" would be quite correct. The use of the ing form makes the experience appear more immediate, we are looking at the experience as it is happening - this is no doubt the reasoning behind the slogan.


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## chamby

Hello !

In their latest commercials, McDonald say "I am loving it!"

What's the difference with "I love it"? 
How would you translate it in French? 
Thanx.


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## quinoa

I love it = J'aime ça
I'm loving it = C'est ça que j'aime
La forme en ING reprend toujours quelque chose qui a été ou pensé ou dit ou commencé avant.


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## I Heart Punctuation

There is no good translation, because we use the gerund (gérondif) in English all the time, while the French do not.  In terms of what it means in English, "I'm loving it" means, "I am enjoying it."  In terms of how to translate it:

I love it: Je l'aime, ou j'aime  ça.
I'm loving it: (literally) Je suis en train de l'aimer.  
But I think your best bet is to think of it simply as "Je l'aime."


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## quinoa

On dirait même "J'adoooooooore."


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## chamby

Alors, quand je pensais à "Je me régale!", je n'étais pas loin du compte?
Thanks to all of you 
Why don't the French use it when the English do??????There must be something wrong in the teaching of it ....
Bye


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## Vicmac

If you look at the McDonald's website for Canada - McDonalds.ca, you will see the French translation they use is as follows:

C’est ça que j’m


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## moustic

chamby said:


> Alors, quand je pensais à "Je me régale!", je n'étais pas loin du compte?
> Thanks to all of you
> Why don't the French use it when the English do??????There must be something wrong in the teaching of it ....
> Bye



Sorry Chamby - the English don't use it that much, apart from the McDo ad. ...


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## I Heart Punctuation

True, moustic, we don't use it in every sentence, but at least in American English we use the present participle with everyday frequency in sentences like, "I'm jogging," rather than "I jog," "I'm laughing," instead of "I laugh," or "I'm feeling down..." instead of "I feel down."


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## breagadoir

From a purely technical grammar perspective the MacDonald's slogan is actually INCORRECT as normally the verb _to love_ should not take the present progressive form. However, I am aware that by making this statement I could be stirring up a hornets' nest because 'who' has the right to say that someone else's grammar is right or wrong, especially in English which is a particularly flexible and untamed language.


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## ParisLondon

Hi! 
This, "I'm loving it", is a sentence used in a famous ad. Yet I thought the verb "love" was one of those that never take an -ing form. More broadly, I've noticed here in England that verbal language-wise, verbs are almost always conjugated in -ing. Is it like the verbal way of conjugating verbs? 
What does "I'm loving it" express that "I love it" does not? 
Thanks for the help!


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## Montaigne

quinoa got it: j'adore.


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## Keith Bradford

ParisLondon said:


> ...What does "I'm loving it" express that "I love it" does not?


 
It expresses: "Please look at this slogan for our restaurants.  It's so unusual that it will stick in your memory and you'll be talking about it on your website from June 2009 to December 2010!"

Don't analyse; understand.


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## ajparis

Sorry if I'm repeating someone (there were lots of answers!) but the "official" translation used by McDonalds in a recent ad campaign was the elegant "C'est tout ce que j'aime".  Definitely, "kiffer" would have been more in the style as Tom29 says.

Sadly, I must disagree that it is not part of current English. I recently received an email from a US university professor saying "I'm loving your proposal."  I suspect that the idea is to make the feeling more "immediate". Maybe it will go away.


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## ajparis

PS I just saw Vicmac's post about "C'est c,a ce que j'm" in Quebec, but I'm absolutely certain that in Paris they used "I'm loving it" and "C'est tout ce que j'aime" on the same posters...


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## cyberpedant

ajparis said:


> Sadly, I must disagree that it is not part of current English. I recently received an email from a *US university professor* saying "I'm loving your proposal."  I suspect that the idea is to make the feeling more "immediate". Maybe it will go away.



So this form of media-sponsored linguistic pollution reaches even to the hallowed halls of academia. Who woulda thunk it?


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## CapnPrep

Montaigne said:


> quinoa got it: j'adore.


But he got it wrong with this message:


quinoa said:


> I love it = J'aime ça
> I'm loving it = C'est ça que j'aime
> La forme en ING reprend toujours quelque chose qui a été ou pensé ou dit ou commencé avant.


I don't know where this curious idea about the _-ing_ form came from, or how it gives rise to the two French translations proposed. The other explanations offered in this thread (the progressive form conveys immediacy and informality) are better. The sentence is incorrect if you want it to be incorrect [by all means, feel free], but this usage was not invented by McDonald's. The following examples (among many) are from COHA:


We love the marvellous; and, while we ridicule our neighbours, for the same folly, *we are loving **it*, more heartily than they. (1823)
He had, on a boyish fancy, built a dream of a woman with every beauty and attraction, and *had been loving **it* for many years, to the exclusion of all other womankind. (1894)
"Wherever you go, and no matter what happens, dear," she said softly, "you'll always know that *I**'m* *loving* *you*, won't you?" (1906)
She nestled closer to him. "Are you still hating the Caribbean?" "I? *I**'m* *loving* * it* the second-best thing in the world." (1916)
Then Albert saw Cicily, alone on the parapet. He joined her immediately.  "Good party, isn't it?" He stood smiling down at her. "Oh, *I**'m* *loving it*." But from her terse accent the contrary was plain. (1938)
Here are some other threads where this question has been discussed:
*EN: How are you feeling?* (FEG)
*I'm loving it.  Continuous form (-ing) with stative verbs.*
*Non-progressive verbs*
*'Wanting' progressive*
*I'm lovin' it* (76 messages so far)


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## Bedestar

Hi !

*Se régaler*
I was searching up this word and found "I love it !" I'm now wondering why the famous fast-food brand's slogan is "I'm loving it!", given that as far as I know you cannot use the be -ing form with feeling verbs... Can somebody help me ? Thanks?


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## Keith Bradford

Tu as tout à fait raison, en ce qui concerne la bonne grammaire anglaise.  Mais pourquoi imagines-tu que les rédacteurs de pub sachent cela ?  Ou s'ils le savent, qu'ils se sentent obligés de respecter la langue ?


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## VanOo

I'd like to point out that 'to be loving' means 'to be affectionate' (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/loving).

As for the said brand, it's because you might enjoy it for a second but the minute after eating you'll be regretting it. Hence no one can say that they _love _it.


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## Omelette

Personally I'm not too sure about this 'rule' in connection with feeling words. 
'We're loving living in Italy'.  'I'm hating work'.  They sound ok to me. 
'Are you enjoying your meal?' 'I'm loving it'....  Why not?
Perhaps it's fairer to say that it is much more common to say 'I love', 'I hate', 'I enjoy' etc, rather than the other form which is comparatively rare.


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