I like you or I love you ?

Well, I'm not very fluent in Vietnamese but the important stuff is till there, "yeu" means love. The first word is supposed to be the title of the person who is talking to you. She was using "toi" which is somewhat impersonal, very formal. It's often a bit out of laziness that some Vietnamese don't use the self title, so "yeu ban" is just a shortcut, she's still using "yeu". She calls you "ban", which is *your* title and means friend. So I would not read much into the missing "toi".

Now, the day she writes "em yeu anh" you'll have good cause to celebrate, it will be a very good upgrade. You could start by using "Anh yeu em" yourself, to grease the wheels 

PS: Oh, and since "thích" somewhat means "like" instead of "love", if she ever writes "toi thich ban" then you're in trouble and I'd drown my sadness in something strong like scotch.

What WillyBaldy said is right on. When your friend starts saying "em yêu anh" you can celebrate. Be sure to reply with "anh yêu em". Anh is an affectionate pronoun generally meaning big brother, and em is generally an affectionate pronoun meaning little sister. When unrelated boys and girls use anh and em it conveys warm fuzzies.

You could up the ante and write "anh se cuoi em" to her 

..so we move into (missed?) understanding matchmaking methods..?     

     Both versions apply; the English 'I'll be with you', or if written in Viet..?

            anh sẽ cưới em     "I'll marry you".     Game on!!   

                ..popcorn sales are improving...     

What's the Viet translation for 'me love you long time'?

WillyBaldy wrote:

You could up the ante and write "anh se cuoi em" to her 

you should add 'I'm gonna put a baby in you'.

QuidProQuo wrote:

What's the Viet translation for 'me love you long time'?

You would have to ask Papillon Soo, who, incidentally, isn't Vietnamese but English-Chinese.

However, if the inquiring mind wants to know, the translations are:

"Em đã yêu anh từ rất lâu" :  I've loved you for so long
"Em sẽ yêu anh mãi mãi" :  I'll love you forever

Switch the subject and object to reflect the gender of the parties.

It doesn't translate directly but this is very close:

Em làm tình rất lâu

After mentioning Papillon Soo, I mistranslated (only slightly) on purpose to steer from a delicate matter and prevent the thread to be shut down, Jim Minh.   

I figured if Google translate would handle it then it couldn't be too far out of line.

Yes, "yeu ban" is a short form of "toi yeu ban", but I don't think it's a shorter of affection. For me, the feelings she have towards you is the same in both cases.

And since I don't know about your relationship, I cannot know how to measure it on love/like scale since it depends a lot on that. However, I guess if you two are just friends, it seems that she means she likes you as a friend )

Much Better

"it is not a lack of Love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages"

    (Nietzsche) 

..and what is Love, if not a friendship on fire..?       

Funny I am a Vietnamese and I can't tell. Maybe your friend is southern Vietnamese? So is more affectionate than northen people. We don't write Toi yeu ban or Yeu ban to our friends and to a lover we don't use "toi" and "ban", that is not quite Vietnamese language. Even to our friend we almost never use Toi and Ban with eachother. There are so many Vietnamese words for that, depend on which province you come from. In Hanoi we call eachother by name or Tớ and ấy if we are both girls, sometimes tao and mày if we are really closed. And we really don't use the word yêu often, not that we are not passonate but it is part of the culture we grow up in. My parents never said they loved me although they do. So more often if we are interested in a guy we use the word "like". Not saying all Vietnamese are like that but all of the girls I know are.

And what's with "thương quá hà"?

Andy Passenger wrote:

And what's with "thương quá hà"?

Not usually use to express lover to a lover. It is used in case like I see you walking under the sun for hours without a hat, when someone tell me they were sick and alone, when I see a stray and hungry puppy.

Heretolearn wrote:

Andy Passenger wrote:

And what's with "thương quá hà"?

Not usually use to express lover to a lover. It is used in case like I see you walking under the sun for hours without a hat, when someone tell me they were sick and alone, when I see a stray and hungry puppy.

My wife and my use it often.
But she's not sure if she's translating the meaning correct into english.

To me thương quá hà is the same as oh poor baby

Andy Passenger wrote:

Heretolearn wrote:

Andy Passenger wrote:

And what's with "thương quá hà"?

Not usually use to express lover to a lover. It is used in case like I see you walking under the sun for hours without a hat, when someone tell me they were sick and alone, when I see a stray and hungry puppy.

My wife and my use it often.
But she's not sure if she's translating the meaning correct into english.

Always thought it meant "Oh so cute!".

Well language is not maths so I don't know, maybe some use it to say so cute. Although more common, so cute would be yêu quá đi, yêu chưa nè, cưng quá đi, cưng chưa nè, etc.

Heretolearn wrote:

Well language is not maths so I don't know, maybe some use it to say so cute. Although more common, so cute would be yêu quá đi, yêu chưa nè, cưng quá đi, cưng chưa nè, etc.

Actually what I heard a lot for "so cute!" is "dễ thương", maybe it's not the same word as just "thương" by itself. Google Translate gives the very boring "Bạn thật dễ thương" translation for "You are so cute" 

Hey folks I'd like to give you an update on this as my ex-wife came over the week-end and when I told her about this thread here and the meaning of "thương quá hà" and it's actually much more subtle than either *my* definition or Heretolearn's. First of all, I was describing what I knew of "dễ thương" which is not the same as "thương". The former means "so cute", but "thương" by itself is more complex.

My ex wife told me that normally, "thương" would mean "Oh poor you" but this word has another much deeper meaning for some Vietnamese. She was honest here and said the deeper meaning is something *she* knows but not all Vietnamese might be aware of this meaning, she was having a hard time explaining but it has to do with education, if you're a city person and so on. (She was not implying that a Vietnamese who doesn't know the deeper meaning of "thương" is illiterate, it's just that it seems to be like a literature, more 'evolved' meaning).

So anyway, in the sense that Andy's wife is telling him, it would mean something like "soulmate", although it's a rough translation because soulmate is a noun but "thương" is a verb . She said that it can have a higher intensity than "yêu" (love) because it can mean "deeply connected forever" or something like this. She said when used in this context, it represents love beyond lust, desire and that we put that person on top of everything else.

Well that's it, I'm just writing here the elements of the big speech my ex gave me. As always with the Vietnamese language, another Vietnamese might give you a different version!

WillyBaldy wrote:

She said that it can have a higher intensity than "yêu" (love) because it can mean "deeply connected forever" or something like this.

That's about what my wife tried to explain to me.  But she was not able to paraphrase it in English properly.

But through your description it is now more understandable for me.