kokoshneta wrote:
Breandán wrote:
It's not the "stealing" that's important in the phrase "you've stolen my heart" but indeed the state the person is in because of it.

Would you really say that “You’ve stolen my heart” focuses more on the guy who’s stolen the heart than on the heart being stolen?
No, and nothing I said even remotely had that meaning. Quite the opposite. This statement is all about how Lisa feels now and who she feels is responsible for it. This is not really about stealing at all but the (wonderful) helpless feeling love causes.
An important difference between "You've stolen my heart" and "You stole my heart" in English is that the latter is relatively more likely to be used after a break up.
This is even moreso in Irish because with
Ghoid tú mo chroí anything could have happened in the meantime, but with
Tá mo chroí goidte agat the other party definitely still has her heart.