Everywhere I go I meet people,
and we say the same things-
hello! how are you! have a good day! you too!
and these greetings are simple enough.
There are many who speak other languages in my community and I often wonder, what could I say to them if I knew what language they spoke? Sometimes you can tell, but other times you would ask.
I wonder what these words are when spoken in other languages.
French: bonjour ! comment allez-vous ! bonne journée ! vous aussi !
Spanish: ¡hola! ¿cómo estás? ¡que tengas un buen día! ¡tú también!
Tagalog: kumusta! kamusta ka! magandang araw! ikaw rin!
Swedish: hej! hur mår du! ha en bra dag! du med!
Japanese: こんにちは！お元気ですか！良い一日を！あなたも！
German: hallo! wie geht es dir! einen schönen tag noch! du auch!
With the internet it is easier than ever to chat with friends who speak other languages. Many people are multi-lingual but Google has become the babel fish translator for Earth.
Facebook also translates comments, and PeakD.com
offers readers AI translation on posts into 7 different languages.
So you can read any Hive post no matter what language it is written in.
I will often use Google Translate and leave comments in the same way.
I think it is facinating that there are over 200 families of languages in the world. And that English is just one Germanic langugage in the family of Indo-European languages. No wonder it has been confusing to understand one another when there are so many ways to speak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages
How did you learn English for the first time? I read this book called "Rosies Walk" in kindergarten, and ever since I was sure I knew how to read. I still read as much as I can, I ordered books from other libraries in college, I read as much wikipedia as I have been able to study since then, I even enjoy reading the scholarly papers and surprise myself how much I seem to understand. But there are so many other languages out there to learn, and so much knowledge that can only be gleamed through that language too. I only ever studied a bit of French in two different school grades.
“Listening across language barriers is an act of inclusion—it transforms difference into connection.” — Synthesis of findings across Ahrens (2023) and van Lent (2025)
If we can all learn to say a few phrases in other languages, it might come in handy!
What is your First Language?