There is no such a thing as “ROMANTIC” for Chinese

In a Chia-Lin Chang’s post at Facebook, I mentioned I got Katy as a bride via a ‘mail order’, Jason Yen said it was a ‘romantic’ story. But based on my ‘research’, there was no such a word/phrase of ‘romantic’ in the original Chinese. Over the thousands of years, Chinese never felt compelled to make such a word/phrase to describe a sentiment that they didn’t have.

‘Romantic’ has been generally referred as 羅漫帝克 or 浪漫的 in Chinese, in my humble opinion, both are ‘translated’ directly through the English pronunciation of ‘romantic’.

羅漫帝克 is generally reserved in describing a male-female relationship of love, whereas 浪漫的 is more kin to ‘romantic’ which has a much broader meaning. Churchill wrote “a long romantic history of the British Empire,” Herman Melville wrote, “collecting romantic articles of commerce—the pearl oyster, arrowroot, ambergris, sandalwood, coconut oil.”

One may argue that without a proper Chinese word of ‘romantic’ doesn’t necessarily mean Chinese are not romantic, just like there is no such a word of 孝 (love one’s parents) in English, except “filial affection/love” and that doesn’t mean Americans do not love their parents.  體貼  may be the closest thing to ‘romantic’.