The teaching plan of the practical lesson №1

Why you shouldn’t say lover if you mean boyfriend or girlfriend

While lover is a word in English, it has a different connotation than boyfriend or girlfriend. Calling someone your lover focuses specifically on the sex. It is not the same as boyfriend and girlfriend despite those being listed as synonyms in online dictionaries. Native English speakers use and associate the word lover with having sex and typically only use it when talking about illicit (illegal or disapproved of by society) or secret affairs.

Why you shouldn’t say make a boyfriend/girlfriend

English is confusing, isn’t it? We say make a friend, but we don’t say make a boyfriend/girlfriend. The reason lies mainly in collocations, which is the way native speakers use words together or the natural word combinations in a language. Because native speakers do not use make this way, if you say this, we will envision you creating a robot of Frankenstein type boyfriend or girlfriend. Collocations are one of the reasons it is so important to learn words in context and not in isolation.