I realised during the civil union debate that English is strangely ill equiped with words about love and marriage. Normally English can't keep its little grabby grabbies* off words in other languages, but for marriage we've just translated the concept right across into marriage and kept no subtle distinctions or connotations. Love has been augmented by the latin/greek words, but that's it.
I find this odd, and wonder what qualities about Britishness kept these areas of expression comparitively limited.
Note: I can think of the following love and marriage related words:
agape
eros
amore (connotations of latin passion?)
aroha (nz-only)