Hello – the hallmark start to any half-decent conversation or interaction across the world. Considering how universal the greeting is – it kinda makes sense there should be just one way to say but having just one word to greet each other with would rob the world of its diversity (and us travellers of reasons to travel)
So, to make things slightly easier for travellers (at least in Europe, for this blog post), we’ve put together a list of how to say “Hello” in 40 European Languages:
- English – Hello in English is Hello – no point repeating that really but figured I might as well start with the obvious! 😉
- Ukrainian – Dobriy den
- Spanish – Hola
- French – Bonjour
- Russian – Zdravstvuyte
- Portuguese – Olá
- Dutch – Hallo
- Danish – Hej
- German – Hallo
- Estonian – Tere
- Italian – Ciao
- Slovak – Ahoj
- Basque – Kaixo
- Bulgarian – Zdraveĭte
- Icelandic – Góðan dag
- Hungarian – Jó napot
- Greek – Geia sas
- Lithuanian – Sveiki
- Croatian – Bok
- Czech – Ahoj
- Luxembourgish – Moïen
- Macedonian – Zdravo
- Bosnian – Dobar dan
- Belarussian – Zdravstvujtie
- Finnish – Hei
- Norwegian – Hallo
- Swedish – Hallå
- Polish – Cześć
- Maltese – Bongu
- Romanian – Salut
- Serbian – Zdravo
- Slovenian – Živjo
- Georgian – Komentari
- Turkish – Merhaba
- Welsh – Helo
- Latin – Salve
- Yiddish – Sholem aleikhem
- Albanian – Përshëndetje
- Armenian – Barev Dzez
- Frisian – Goeie dei
YOUR TURN! How do you say hello in your local language? You get extra points if you can speak several languages…
I (Yaya) speak English, Yoruba and a bit of French so my 3 are: Hello (easy), Bawo Ni (Yoruba) and Bonjour.
Lloyd says his are English and Welsh so Hello and Helo! 🙂
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