Wednesday, April 24, 2019

How to say Thank you in several languages

What are the ten basic words you need to know or find easy to recognize because you hear them most often?

1 Thanks
2 Please
3 Hello
4 Goodbye
5 Yes
6 No
7 How much
8 Ok
9 Toilet
10 Restaurant

Not enough. You need another ten:
1 Exit
2 Entrance
3 Pull
4 Push
5 Water
6 Taxi
7 Food
8 Drink
9 Where?
10 Lost

Let's start with thanks.

Flag of UK

thank you / thanks - English


Flag of France.

1 merci - French
2 mersi - Romanian


German flag

3 danke - German
4 gracias - Spanish
5 grazie - Italian


6 obrigado (said by a male) / obrigada (said by a female) - Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese
7 terima kasih - Malay /Indonesian
8 spasibo / spasibuh - Russian


9 efkaristo - Greek


10 dankon - Esperanto

bedankt - thanks (like be thanked by the Dutch)
vielen dank
tak - Danish
takk - Norwegian
tack - Swedish
arigato - Japanese

I remember the Portuguese word obrigado with the memory aid, much obliged.
I remember the Malay terimah kasih with the memory aid, terribly grateful. thanks
Gracias, Spanish, sounds like grateful.
Danke sounds like thank ya/you

What is the easiest?

Esperanto Dankon

The hardest
Bulgarian - blagodarya
Tamil - nanri



Chinese flag
CHINESE 
simplified!
谢谢
Xièxiè
(Pronounced shay shay)

Quiz

Which languages are these?

danke
gracias
grazie
merci
mersi
shay-shay
shukran
spasibo
terima kasih
tak
tac
takk
todah robuh

Can you say thank you in these languages?
1 Arabic
2 French
3 Chinese (Mandarin)
4 German
5 Hebrew
6 Indonesian
7 Malay
8 Portuguese
9 Russian
10 Spanish

Useful Websites for Travellers
Free internet language learning
duolingo.com
Facebook polyglots page for those interested in learning and discussing languages
Polyglots (The Community)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/polygotcommunity/

Flashcards to view and make
https://www.cram.com/search?query=languages&submit=Search
https://tinycards.duolingo.com/decks/8hvj9dyD/how-to-say-hello-in-20-languages

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Trainer for business in English and other languages. Please see my other blog posts and share links to your favourite posts with your friends and colleagues.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I and my family have lived in the UK, Spain, the USA and Singapore. I am a trave writer and phtographer and teacher of English A level and English as a foreign language.

Please come to a Toastmasters International Club where the English clubs have a langauge evaluator or grammarian.  We also have French, German, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and other language clubs based in Singapore and many more online around the world which because of Covid-19 are now meeting online.

I am President of Braddell Heights Advanced, meeting every Wednesday, on zoom the first Wednesday of the month but the other Wednesdays are workshops on app learncool.sg
Or quicker to type and easier to remember:  tinyurl.com/BHACOOL

No comments:

Post a Comment