"¡Yo amo la paella!" exclaimed my little sister as we enjoyed a sunny afternoon in Alcúdia de Crespins. The warm air, the company, and the Spanish food had clearly inspired her to bust out her rudimentary Spanish.
My Spanish friends, Quique and Belén, smiled quietly. They
knew what she meant; both spoke English and had mentally
translated her statement word for word: "I love paella". Quique,
always the jokester, couldn't resist. "That’s great! Are you going to
marry it?" he quipped, chuckling at his own humor.
Vangie, of course, looked puzzled. She had been diligently
studying Spanish on Duolingo during the long plane ride from
California. "What’s so funny? It was a perfect statement!" she
insisted.
Belén jumped in to clarify, sensing Vangie’s confusion. "We
don’t say it that way in Spanish. You don’t 'love' a thing; you can love people—your mom, dad, children, boyfriend—but not food. You can say 'I love you, Mom' and give her a kiss, but not paella! In Spanish, things please us; they don’t love us back. We say 'La paella me encanta,' which means 'Paella is really pleasing to me.' Does that make sense?"
"Okay," replied Vangie, though her tone suggested she wasn’t quite convinced. I could tell she found the logic unnecessarily complicated. I didn’t push the issue; after all, learning a new language means learning a new way to see the world, and I didn't
want to go down that rabbit hole.
Instead, I seized the moment to clarify something that had been nagging me for a while. "So, what’s the difference between 'amar' and 'querer'? I don’t hear 'amar' much in Spain, but I remember people using it in Mexico."
"Yeah, and it’s what Duolingo teaches!" Vangie chimed in, as if to defend her relationship with paella. "And 'querer' means 'to want,' right?"
"Querer also means 'to love,'" I said, determined to back up my point. "Te quiero means 'I love you.'"
Quique, still amused, replied, "We don’t really use 'amar' here. It sounds archaic to us. We use 'querer' to express love." Vangie, horrified, shot back, "That's awful! You WANT people? You don’t love them?"
Belén, ever the peacemaker, soothed her. "It means both, Vangie. It depends on the context."
Vangie looked unconvinced but decided to let it slide. Later that evening, as we walked past a pastry shop, she stopped in her tracks and sighed dreamily. "La tarta de chocolate me encanta," she said, perfectly nailing the Spanish phrase. Then, with a cheeky
grin, she whispered to me, "But between you and me… I still love paella."
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