Is mon amour used for men and women?

Yes. It never changes, because it is the word for love that is masculine, not the person.

What is the difference between mon chéri and ma chérie?

Mon chéri is said to a man or a boy, ma chérie to a woman or a girl.

French · phrasebook

How to say my love in French

My love in French is mon amour. It is the same for a man and for a woman, because the word for love is masculine whoever it is said to. French also says mon chéri to a man and ma chérie to a woman, both close to my darling.

Aurélien CuvelierSep 19, 2026

mon amour

my love

anyone

The ways to say it

mon amour

my love

anyone

mon chéri

my darling (to a man)

anyone

ma chérie

my darling (to a woman)

anyone

How to use it

These are words for home. In the first exchange below, someone looking for their keys calls their partner mon amour, in the middle of an ordinary question. That is how the phrase lives in French: inside everyday sentences, not only in declarations.

Mon chéri and ma chérie agree with the person addressed, so the spelling and the possessive both change. Parents use them with children too, as several exchanges elsewhere on this site show.

Watch out

Mon amour carries a liaison: the last letter of the first word sounds at the start of the second. It is marked with a tie in the examples.

In a real conversation

Each exchange is a line and its reply. Greyed letters are written and not pronounced. A tie marks a liaison, with the sound you hear under it. A label under a verb names its tense when it is not the present.

Tu as vu mes clés, mon amour ?Have you seen my keys, my love?Elles sont sur la table, dans la cuisine.They are on the table, in the kitchen.

Bonsoir ma chérie, je rentre un peu plus tard.Good evening my love, I am coming home a little later.D'accord, le dîner sera prêt à ton retour.All right, dinner will be ready when you get back.

Questions people ask

Is mon amour used for men and women?: Yes. It never changes, because it is the word for love that is masculine, not the person.
What is the difference between mon chéri and ma chérie?: Mon chéri is said to a man or a boy, ma chérie to a woman or a girl.

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Written by

Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck

Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.

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