In Mandarin, 愛 means romantic love. However, New Practical Primer of Literary Chinese by Paul Rouzer has this to say about its use in literary Chinese:
This character [愛] usually does not imply "romantic love" in literary Chinese, as it does in the modern East Asian languages.
So which character(s) are used for romantic love in classical Chinese?
This should be a clever question!
In classical Chinese
“爱” should be love to culture, nature, mess people or emperor(the culture emblem)
“恋” should be romantic love to another person, a butterfly loves a flower (蝶恋花)
“情” is a noun of “exist love/adore”, more clearly --“恋情”
For further,
“慕” should like “adore”, always use as “爱慕”, “倾慕”
In traditional/full Chinese writing these words are
愛、戀、蝶戀花、情、慕、愛慕、傾慕
1, 愛, is traditional Chinese, be used it HongKong, Marcau, and Taiwan. 2, 愛，can be a noun, can be a verb. But 戀 is more focusing on verb. and they are not in same meaning. We say 我爱她。but never say 我戀她。 3, passions=激情， alluring=艷, 艷 more means on color. 4, In Chinese, every character is already very basic meaning, it must use in context, otherwise you hardly can use a basic character to present more meaning. 5, From a Chinese option, I never think / study Chinese in this style, hope you just read newspaper or book could improve your Chinese.
I am a developer, would like to find some technique thing, I don't know how / why I go into here, but whatever, hope I can explain well.
