Our regular columnist Molly Quell is thinking of love and whether the Dutch really know what that means.

A recent post on The Netherlands subreddit discussed the cultural differences surrounding telling someone you love them. A Dutch woman told her Austrian love interest “I love you” in English, sparking a discourse about when you drop the L word and if it has different meanings in different languages.

Presumably this early career Dutch-Austrian couple speak English with each other — hence the use of “I love you” — and the Dutch often don’t give the same emotional weight to the English words they sprinkle into conversation that they would to Dutch words.

(See: The prevalence of the F word, pronounced with a full jacket potato’s worth of accent.)

The Dutch version of I love you is Ik hou van je – or literally I hold of you.

Like most things with the Dutch, it’s direct and pragmatic. “I’ll hang on to you, let’s not bring too much emotion into it.”

If you want dramatic declaration of feelings, talk to Shakespeare:

Hear my soul speak:
The very instant that I saw you did
My heart fly to your service

Or Hozier:

When my time comes around
Lay me gently in the cold dark earth
No grave can hold my body down
I’ll crawl home to her

Not to a Dutchie.

Part of the problem with the English language is that it uses the same word for your feelings towards your lifelong soulmate, your family, your dog and peanut butter. (Or at least my feelings about peanut butter.) Other languages distinguish between these types of love.

Spanish differentiates between casual I love you (te quiero) and a romantic one (te amo). The ancient Greeks had a whole list (eros, philia, etc).

The Dutch simply love less. Or, if I am being fair, they express that love less. You don’t tell your mom you love her at the end of every phone call, you don’t express deep enthusiasm for sandwich condiments, you don’t even sign birthday cards with “love.” Just the informal “groetjes” or “greetings”.

People from other countries do also struggle with talking about love. In fact the most awkward discussion of love that has ever and will ever occur in the entirety of human existence was from Princess Diana’s engagement interview.

The sigh Diana takes before saying “of course” when responding to a question as to whether she was in love with then-prince Charles could be heard on Mars.

I was initially put off by the lack of vocalised expressions of love in the Netherlands, but I’ve adjusted to the local culture. My hot take (and this is piping) is that neither American enthusiasm nor Dutch reticence is objectively bad. Whatever works for you and your relationship with your significant other, family or condiment of choice.

With Valentine’s Day approaching, I asked my very own Dutchie how he viewed saying “I love you.” I asked him when the last time he had said it to family members and in which language. I asked him if he would say that he loved food groups or movies or books.

“I love you,” he said, not to me, but to the dog.

And then he left the room.

I wanted to ask him if he loved the dog or was simply holding onto the dog but I know that love, in whatever language, only goes so far.