Use प्यार for almost everything. It covers romantic love, love for family, love for a place or a food, and it is the word real people use in real sentences. मोहब्बत is romantic and slightly literary, at home in poetry and film. इश्क़ is the most intense of the three, carries Sufi and Urdu associations, and used casually sounds theatrical — roughly like saying ‘I am consumed with passion’ while ordering coffee.

Note the gender ending on the speaker’s verb — करता for a man, करती for a woman. मुझे तुम्हारी याद आती है is worth learning carefully: it means I miss you, and literally reads ‘your memory comes to me’, which is a rather better image than the English.

In practice, मैं तुम्हारे साथ हूँ — I am with you — carries more weight in Indian relationships than a declaration of love does. It signals commitment and presence rather than feeling.

जान is the workhorse endearment and is genuinely used, not just sung. जानू and बाबू are softer and more playful, common in texting and among younger couples. Older couples in India frequently use no endearment at all, or address each other indirectly — a wife may call her husband सुनिए, meaning simply ‘listen’.

This is the part that a vocabulary list cannot teach. Direct verbal declarations are far less common in Indian families and relationships than in Western ones. Parents almost never say प्यार to adult children, and long-married couples may go years without saying it to each other. This is not coldness.

Affection is shown through food, worry and practical care. A mother who has kept your dinner warm, a partner who asks whether you reached safely, a father who quietly pays a bill — these are the declarations. The question खाना खाया? does the work that ‘I love you’ does elsewhere.

Public physical affection between couples remains uncommon and in smaller towns attracts genuine disapproval, while the same restraint does not apply to friends of the same gender. Reading Indian relationships by Western signals will mislead you in both directions.

प्यार opens with a प्य cluster — the p and y blend into a single motion rather than two syllables. मोहब्बत doubles the b, held very briefly. इश्क़ has a श्क़ cluster ending in the deep क़, though most speakers soften it to a plain k. जान is a long open aa. And तुमसे runs together as one word, never as two separated beats.

• Using इश्क़ or मोहब्बत in ordinary conversation, where प्यार is meant.
• Getting the speaker’s gender ending wrong — करता versus करती.
• Assuming a lack of verbal declarations means a lack of affection.
• Using जान or जानू with someone you are not close to.
• Public affection with a partner in conservative areas.

1. Say I love you with the correct ending for your own gender.
2. Rank प्यार, मोहब्बत, इश्क़ and स्नेह by intensity and register.
3. Use मुझे तुम्हारी याद आती है in a sentence about a friend and a partner.
4. List three non-verbal ways affection is shown in Indian families.
5. Practise the प्य cluster in प्यार until it is one sound.