My first kiss was with an Albanian man I met in Venice, Italy; within hours, Jeta and I were telling each other, “Ti amo.” I didn’t mean it any more than I knew his last name (and I won’t kid myself into thinking there was much sincerity on his end).
As my fleeting romance with Jeta proved, the Italian language holds very little emotional weight for me. In English, my native language, I don’t make a habit of telling strangers, “I love you.”
In any cross-cultural relationship that is also bilingual, there is a fundamental question that needs to be answered: What is going to be the couple’s language of romance?
Nadya Faulx 