Learning how to say, "Love is blind," in French is very easy since it is a literal translation. In addition, the concept that love is blind is popular both in English-speaking and in French-speaking regions, making it a fairly common expression in both languages.
How to Say, "Love Is Blind," in French
If you look up the noun love, and the adjective blind, in an English-to-French dictionary, you will be halfway through the translation of the phrase. In addition, there are two difficult parts of getting the phrase grammatically correct. First, you need to remember to put an article before the noun (required in French, but not in English). Secondly, you need to conjugate the verb correctly.
Translating Love
The French word for love is amour; however, you can't just use the word amour when forming the phrase. In French, articles (also called determiners) are required in all contexts where a noun appears. This is unlike English, which makes translating the phrase difficult for English speakers.
Since the noun amour is masculine and singular, you can choose between the articles un and le. Un amour means "a love" or "one love", and can be used, for example, in phrases like, un amour formidable (a wonderful love), or un amour pour toujours (one love for always). In contrast, the definite article le classifies a usage that is general or that distinguishes a specific love without selecting it from among a group. Examples of le with amour are l'amour fou (crazy love), or l'amour de ses parents (the love of his parents). For the expression "Love is blind," le is the correct determiner.
Not only is getting the article right a difficult point, but it is also the case that the article itself changes from le to the letter "l" followed by an apostrophe because of a process called elision. This happens because the article le ends with a vowel and the noun amour starts with a vowel; instead of keeping this format, the e in le disappears, and is replaced by an apostrophe.
Translating the word love in the expression "love is blind," results in l'amour. Next, the verb has to be conjugated correctly.
Translating Is
The verb "to be" is used in the expression "Love is blind". The French verb être means "to be". Knowing the verb is only the first step though; in addition, the verb must be conjugated so that it agrees with the subject (the noun love), and put in the right tense (simple present).
If you use a French verb conjugation chart, you will find that the third person singular, present tense form for the French verb être is est. This brings you to the two-word phrase, l'amour est, which means, "love is", which can then be completed with any adjective or analogy that you'd like. Once you've come up with the expression for "Love is blind" in French, it can be fun to come up with other adjectives to insert into this phrase to create your own unique descriptions of love. You can also try putting in whole noun phrases to make analogies of what love is to you, for example, "love is a rose bouquet" or "love is the sun rising".
Translating Blind
The adjective for blind in French is aveugle. Compared to getting the determiner on the noun correct, and conjugating the verb properly, the adjective poses little problem. Therefore, once you know the word aveugle, you have completed your phrase "Love is blind." The full translation is L'amour est aveugle.
Common French Love Phrases
Now that you have learned how to say, "Love is blind," in French, you may be interested in learning some of other popular French love phrases:
- I love you
- I love you always
- Romantic French phrases
Since French is the language of love, knowing these phrases is valuable whether you are a beginning French student or a bilingual francophile.
