Across the globe, many cultures have words for love and attachment that don't have a direct English equivalent, Axios' Carly Mallenbaum writes.

• Why it matters: As Valentine's Day approaches (Saturday!), borrowing a word from another language could help you say what "love" alone can't.

📝 Axios Finish Line readers recommended that we write about some of these words as part of our ongoing series on untranslatable words.

🖼️ The big picture: English heavily relies on the "L" word for all manner of deep connections — which could say something about our culture's comfort with big feelings.

• "It's not necessarily a bad thing," says Ben Kramer, a linguist and course designer at Duolingo. "There's also something beautiful" about viewing feelings for a relative on the same level as those for a romantic partner, he says.

🇯🇵 In Japanese, the phrase "koi no yokan" means the premonition of love — the idea that you will be in love with the person in the future.

• No, that's not the same as "love at first sight," Kramer tells Axios.
• The Japanese have another word for that — "hitomebore," which is notable, Kramer says, because until recently they used a single word for both blue and green.

☪️ In Arabic, "ya'aburnee" means "you bury me." In other words, you love someone so much that you need them to outlive you because you can't go on without them.

• There are other words in Arabic for different levels of affection, but for expressing love, that is the "most pure" way, Kramer says.

🤟 In American Sign Language, there are multiple ways to express that you love someone. The same is true for Norwegian ("elske" is the most intense) and Spanish ("te amo" vs. "te quiero").

• The Ancient Greeks also recognized different types of love.

🌍 More from around the world:

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 In Welsh, "hiraeth" is a longing for a place, time or person that can't be reached.
• 🇰🇷 In Korean, "jeong" describes a specific kind of attachment, a fondness between two people or for an object that builds over time.
• 🇫🇷 In French, "mon petit chou" literally means "my little cabbage," but is a term of endearment like the English "honey."
• 🇩🇪 🇩🇰 German and Danish have loving pet names that mean "treasure," Kramer says.
• 🇸🇪 In Swedish, a term that can mean "little old person" can also be affectionately used to describe a loved one.

The bottom line: Love is universal. But sometimes it sounds better in another language.

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Often called Galentine's Day or Palentine's Day, the day before Valentine's Day has become its own holiday for platonic love.

• Marisa Franco, a psychologist, professor and author of the research-backed book "Platonic," sent us some discussion prompts from her last annual Palentine's Day soirée.

💕 Just a few:

1. On defining love: What's something you've learned about love that you no longer believe?
2. On platonic love: What have your friends taught you about what it means to love?
3. On self-love: Do you agree with 14th-century German theologian Meister Eckhart that "if you love yourself, you love everybody else as you do yourself"?

More questions ... Franco's friendship questionnaire.