How normal-sounding is the slogan "I'm lovin' it" to native ears?
I know it sounded quite odd to me when I first heard it — and it still sometimes does —, but I can't even tell why. Sure, love is supposedly a stative verb, but it's being used in progressive aspect all the time without sounding weird at all (lots of songs come to mind, e.g. Loving Every Minute). It's only this particular slogan that somehow doesn't quite work for me. I would expect that to be totally on purpose — it's advertising, after all —, but Wikipedia doesn't mention any objections from native speakers (as it does with "Think Different" and "Winston tastes good like a cigarette should"). So I'm asking the native speakers of this community: does "I'm lovin' it" sound completely natural to you? Just a bit off? Completely weird? Why?
Best Answer
It sounds fine to me. (But I'm not actually a native speaker, and Indian English does have a reputation for using the progressive a lot.)
This is how I interpret "I'm loving it". (I've put back the 'g' because writing lovin' is too folksy for me.) I also assume "it" refers to something particular, like McDonald's or the food there. Also, I think it helps to consider the analogous sentence "I'm enjoying it".
English certainly uses stative: I love chocolate, or I enjoy classical music. This expresses your position on something. But suppose I'm at a play/concert/movie, and someone asks me what I feel, during the event. I may say "I'm enjoying it" or "I'm loving it (at this moment / so far)". This seems perfectly natural to me, though perhaps not to native speakers everywhere.
There's also a difference between "I love it" and "I'm loving it". If you love chocolate, it only says what you feel when the issue of chocolate comes up, but if you are loving McDonald's, it implies that you're there right now and/or are actively engaged in thinking about it and loving it. (Just as "I'm enjoying classical music [right now]" means more than "I enjoy classical music".) Presumably, "I'm loving it" is a subtle suggestion that you too, like the speaker of the slogan, ought to be at McDonald's right now and actually get on with the act of loving it, not merely think of it as a nice place to visit from time to time. :-)