To say "I love you" in Chinese, say wo ai ni (我爱你). It is just three syllables — wo (我), "I," ai (爱), "love," ni (你), "you" — with no conjugation, no gender, and nothing to rearrange. Grammatically it may be the simplest love confession on earth. Culturally, it is anything but.
In China, ai (爱), "love," is a big, serious word, spent sparingly. Many parents and long-married couples almost never say wo ai ni out loud. They show love another way — by feeding you, worrying over you, and asking, pointedly, whether you have eaten.
Wo ai ni: the simplest hard sentence
The sentence itself could not be easier. Chinese verbs never change shape, so wo ai ni stays exactly the same no matter who says it or when. What makes it weighty is not grammar but usage: saying ai aloud is a real declaration, not a casual sign-off the way "love you!" often is in English. Younger couples, raised on pop songs and TV dramas, say it more readily than their parents' generation ever did — but even now it lands with real weight.
"I like you" and "I miss you"
Because ai is so heavy, the everyday first step is gentler: wo xihuan ni (我喜欢你), "I like you." It is what most people say at the start of something, and it still carries real romantic weight — closer to "I'm into you" than a lukewarm "you're okay."
When you are apart, tell someone wo xiang ni (我想你) — "I miss you," or literally "I am thinking of you." The verb xiang (想) means both at once, which is its own quiet poetry.
我爱你
wo ai ni
I love you
我喜欢你
wo xihuan ni
I like you
我想你
wo xiang ni
I miss you / I'm thinking of you
Sweet names for someone you love
Couples and families lean on warm nicknames instead of given names. Qin'ai de (亲爱的), "dear" or "darling," opens letters and text messages alike. Baobei (宝贝), literally "treasure," is the Chinese "baby."
Married couples call each other laopo (老婆), "wifey," and laogong (老公), "hubby" — affectionate, everyday, and now borrowed freely by plenty of young couples who are not married at all.
亲爱的
qin'ai de
Dear / darling
宝贝
baobei
Baby / treasure
老婆
laopo
Wife (wifey)
老公
laogong
Husband (hubby)
520: the day and the code
Chinese hides a whole language of love in numbers. Say 520 out loud — wu er ling — and it echoes wo ai ni, so in a text 520 simply means "I love you." May 20 (5/20) has grown into an unofficial online Valentine's Day for confessions and proposals. Couples pair it with 1314, the number code for yi sheng yi shi (一生一世), "for a lifetime" — so "520 1314" reads as "I love you forever." It is just the tip of a deep iceberg of Chinese number slang.
Keep learning Chinese
In China love is shown at least as often as it is spoken — but knowing the words means you will recognize the moment when it matters. Keep going with our free Chinese relationships phrases, and practice each one with audio and spaced repetition in the Pretalk app, so wo ai ni is ready the day you need it.
