'I love you' in other languages
When you say someone you love her/him, you'll hardly use the formal pronoun "usted".
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Remember that there are vast regions of Latin America, where USTED is not formal, it's used between lovers, between brothers and sisters, and parents use USTED to address their children, this is found in
1. Central America (Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador)
2. parts of Colombia (in Bogotá for example)
3. parts of Chile
So, informality and formality of subject pronouns in Spanish vary according to region: 1. vosotros is informal in Spain, but it sounds formal/archaic in Latin America; 2. ustedes is formal in Spain (except for Canary Islands) but it's informal in Latin America; 3. vos is formal/archaic in Spain and in the Carribean but informal in Central America and parts of South America (Columbia, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay); 4. usted is formal in Spain, Mexico, Argentina, but can be informal in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, and Chile.
So, yes, people in Colombia can say both: Te amo or Lo/La amo with no differences whatsoever, and in Costa Rica Lo/La amo is the preferred form.
Tuteo: using TU as an informal pronoun
Voseo: using VOS as an informal pronoun
Ustedeo: using USTED as an informal pronoun
<<When you say someone you love her/him, you'll hardly use the formal pronoun "usted". Nevertheless it should be "le amo", not "lo amo" or "la amo".>>
That's called LEISMO and it's a mistake done by Spaniards, it's a pity that such mistake is spread like bushfire in Spain.
It's not a mistake, it's proper European Spanish.
Maghreb French: Je te kiffe.
Canadian French: Sh'teme
Lousiana Creole: Mo laime toi.
Haitian Creole: Mwen renmen or Mwen renmen'w.
Mauritian Creole: Mo content toi.
Réunion Creole: Mi aim (or aime) a ou.
Antillian Creole: Men ainmainw.
Gaulish: Rwy'n dy garu di.
XUXA , darling, revise your facts. Look at this:
Se define como leísmo de cortesía al uso de le, les en vez de las formas lo, la, los, las para la segunda persona de cortesía del singular (usted), o segunda persona de cortesía en plural, segunda persona del plural (ustedes), ejemplo: ¿En qué puedo atenderle, señor?. Se puede llegar a considerar un mecanismo intrínseco de la lengua para evitar confusiones entre la segunda y la tercera persona en frases como. Le acompaño (a usted) a sitio donde va a esperarla (a ella).
Por eso no sólo se restringe a las áreas tradicionalmente leístas en dialectología (centro de España, Ecuador, algunas zonas andinas en otros países), sino que se extiende a todas y es frecuente su empleo con verbos con los que se establecen relaciones de autoridad, en especial si son de los llamados verbos de cambio de régimen (como ayudar u obedecer) verbos que han cambiado o están cambiando el complemento indirecto por el complemento directo u otros en los que a veces hay dudas en el empleo de estos pronombres (verbos de afección psíquica, etc).
La RAE, no sólo acepta, sino que recomienda este leísmo y ya no sólo en el caso de personas masculinas como sucede en la tercera persona, lo acepta también con interlocutores femeninos, especialmente en fórmulas fijas de saludo o despedida del tipo Le saluda atentamente y similares.
Correction:
Rwy'n dy garu di. (= Welsh btw).
Breton: Karout a ran ac'hanout or Da garout a ran or Me az kar
Irish Gaelic: Ta gra agam ort
Scottish Gaelic: Tha gaol agam ort
Manx: Ta graih aym orrym
Schelta: Ta gra ... ???
That articule (made by Spaniards BTW) only states what Leismo is, it doesn't recomend, you made up that last paragraph, anyway fortunally there are plenty Spanish speaking contries so it can be noticed that Spaniards use the LE pronoun improperly, the correct way should be:
Yo lo conozco (I know him)
Yo la conozco (I know her)
No le conozco nada malo (I don't know anything bad about him/her)
But Spaniards of course made the terrible mistake of simply saying:
Yo le conozco meaning "I know him" which is terrible wrong.
Personally I don't give a fuck is they speak improperly but it pisses me off that they think that their goddamn mistake is actually the correct way of saying it...
That'd be like the Brits saying "I'd like OF meet you" instead of "I'd like TO meet you" and then think that they're actually speaking the proper way...
XUXA, how do you dare to tell the Spanish how they have to speak Spanish? It is nice that Southern Americans speak the way they want, we don't correct them, but you must also respect Spanish spoken in Spain. In the end we invented the Spanish language, not you. We have our own standard, different than yours, and here leismo de cortesía is not only correct, but recommended by RAE. I didn't invent that paragraph, you can consult aobut leismo de cortesia in "Diccionario Panhispanico de Ddas" made by RAE if you don't believe me. And since RAE works in collaboration with American Academiae, leismo de cortesia is also correct in America. You can also do a research in the internet and look at webpages from Argentina, they also use leismo de cortesía. So it's not only reduced to European Spanish. For example:
"yo le amo a usted"
http://ar.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090616022602AAGhNKL