Feb 21, 2018

Learn To Say 'Hello' in 50 Languages

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Paschalis Angelopoulos

Happy International Mother Language Day!

International Mother Language Day was started ‘to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism’, in February 2000. 18 years later, it is a chance to celebrate your own language and culture, as well as other languages and cultures.

The aim of International Mother Language Day is to encourage all the languages in the world to be kept alive and taught and the cultures from which the languages have come from to be understood and embraced.


Languages in the world

Languages are very important for society, because they allow people to communicate and express themselves.

In the world, it is thought that there are currently 6909 living languages, which is maybe not an exact number because some ‘linguists sometimes disagree what are distinct languages and what are dialects of the same language.’

Only a few hundred languages are taught in the educational system and to the public, with even less of those languages used in the digital world. As a result, it is thought that more than 50% of the 6909 languages will no longer exist in a few generations.


Ways to celebrate International Mother Language Day

  • Come and learn English at one of our English schools, either in LondonEastbourne or Dublin!
  • Learn a new word in a different language
  • Teach someone in your class a new word in your own language
  • Ask someone who speaks a different language how to pronounce a word correctly

Or why not celebrate today by learning how to say hello in a different language?

Language

Greetings: ‘Hello’

Arabic

Marhaba

Bavarian and Austrian German

Grüß Gott

Bengali

Namaskar

Bulgarian

Zdraveite

Catalan

Hola

Chamorro

Hafa adai

Chinese

Nǐ hǎo

Croatian

Dobro Jutro = Good morning

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Dobar dan = Good day

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Dobra većer = Good evening

Danish

God dag

Dutch

Hoi = Hi
Hallo = Hello

Finnish

hyvää päivää

French

Bonjour

Gaeilge

Dia dhuit

German

Guten tag

Greek

Yasou

Hebrew

Shalom

Hindi

Namaste

Hungarian

Jo napot

Icelandic

Góðan dag

Igbo

Nde-ewo

Indonesian

Selamat siang

Italian

Salve

Japanese

Konnichiwa

Korean

Ahn nyong ha se yo

Latin

Salve

Lithuanian

Sveiki

Luxembourgish

Moïen

Maltese

Bonġu

Nahuatl

Niltze

Nepali

Namastē

Norwegian

Hallo

Persian

Salam

Polish

Cześć

Portuguese

Olá

Romanian

Bună ziua

Russian

Zdravstvuyte

Serbian

Zdravo

Slovak

Ahoj

Spanish

Hola

Swahili

Hujambo

Swedish

Hallå

Tahitian

Ia orna

Thai

Sawasdee

Tsonga

Avuxeni

Turkish

Merhaba

Ukrainian

Zdravstvuyte

Urdu

Assalamo aleikum

Vietnamese

xin chào

Welsh

Shwmae

Zulu

Sawubona

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