The international greeting ‘Hello’ is the first word we get to know before entering any country, therefore I thought it would be great to make a giant list of the equivalent term in various languages. How many did you know beforehand?
Afrikaans – hallo
Albanian – tjeta
Amharic – selam
Arabic – marhaban
Armenian – barev
Azerbaijani – salam
Basque – kaixo
Belarusian – vitaju
Bengali – nomoshkar (hindu) or assalamualaikum (muslim)
Breton – demat
Bulgarian – zdravej
Burmese – mingalarba
Bosnian – zdravo
Cambodian – sous-dey
Cantonese – neih hou
Catalan – hola
Chichewa – moni
Chinese – ni hao
Croatian – bok
Czech – ahoj
Danish – hallo
Dutch – hallo
Dzongkha – kuzu-zangpo
Esperanto – saluton
Estonian – tere
Fijian – bula
Finnish – terve
French – bonjour
Frisian – goeie
Gaelic – halo
Georgian – gamarjoba
German – hallo
Greek – yassou
Gujarati – namaste
Hausa – sannu
Hawaiian – aloha (my favourite)
Hebrew – shalom
Hindi – namaste
Hungarian – szia
Icelandic – hallo
Igbo – kedu
Indonesian – halo
Irish – dia duit
Italian – ciao
Japanese – konnichiwa
Kannada – namaste
Kazakh – salem
Kinyarwanda – bite
Korean – annyeong
Kurdish – merheba
Kyrgyx – salam
Lao – sabaidee
Latin – Salve
Latvian – sveika (male) or sveiks (female)
Limburgish – Hallau
Lingala – mbote
Lithuanian – sveikas (male) or sveika (female)
Luganda – ki kati
Luxembourgish – moien
Macedonian – Добар ден
Malagasy – miarahaba
Malay – hello or hai
Malayalam – aay
Maltese – Ħelow
Maori – kia ora
Marshallese – yokwe
Mongolian – sain bainu uu
Ndebele – salibonani
Nepali – namaste
Northern Sotho – dumelang
Norwegian – god dag
Odia – ନମସ୍କାର
Oromo – attam
Palauan – alii
Pashto – salaam
Persian – salam
Polish – czesc
Portuguese – ola
Punjabi – sat sri akal (Sikh) or salaam (Muslim)
Romanian – salut
Russian – privet
Samoan – malo
Serbian – zdravo
Sesotho – dumela
Shona – mhoro
Sinhala – halo
Slovak – ahoj
Slovene – zivjo
Spanish – hola
Swahili – jambo
Swati – sawubona
Swedish – hej
Tagalog – helow
Tahitian – ia ora na
Taiwanese Hokkien – li-ho
Tamil – vanakkam
Tatar – salam
Telugu – namaskaram
Thai – sa-wat-dee
Tibetan – tashi delek
Tigrinya – selam
Tok Pisin – gude
Tongan – malo e lelei
Tsonga – avuxeni
Tswana – dumela
Turkish – selam
Ukrainian – pryvit
Urdu – salam
Uyghur – yahshimusiz
Uzbek – salom
Vietnamese – xin chao
Welsh – s’mae
Wolof – salaam aleekum
Xhosa – molo
Yiddish – sholem-aleykhem
Yoruba – bawo
Zulu – sawubona