It narrowly beat amore, the Italian word for love, although Italian was named the world's most romantic language.

Italian words also dominated the top places in the list of most romantic words

Bellissima, which is both Italian and Spanish for very beautiful, was voted the third most romantic word, while tesoro, which is both Italian and Spanish for treasure (as in Mi tesoro / My treasure) came fourth.

The survey was conducted by London-based Today Translations which polled over 320 of its linguists.

After Italian, they found the second-most romantic language was French, which was way ahead of Spanish and English in joint third place.

In the same poll, the firm asked its linguists to pick the least romantic-sounding way to say, I love you in any language.

The winner was Japan's watakushi-wa anata-wo ai shimasu, ahead of the Welsh rydw i'n dy garu di and qaparha, which, the firm noted, is Klingon, as spoken in the Star Trek universe.

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