How to say hello in different languages – basic phrases which will impress your business partners

Say Ni hao! to greet people in China and you will earn their respect. This is common in all countries all over the world. People appreciate when you know a few words in their own language. They see it more positive the more difficult the language is. By knowing at least how to say hello in different languages you show that you are not ignorant and you respect local culture.

How to be efficient in languages learning?

My professional job is about continuous improvement of manufacturing processes – make them more effective with less waste and higher efficiency. This has also influence on my personal life. I’m always analyzing what I’m doing and in the end, I’m struggling to do it in the most effective way (that’s why I run this blog – you can read about it a little bit in About Lean Traveller Guide :-)) In this post I want to write some words about effective languages learning. What is possible and what no?

Tim Ferris, author of “4-hour body” and “4-hour work week” introduced the phrase “Minimum effective dose” saying that 20% of efforts bring 80% of success. This is a well-known 80/20 Pareto rule which can be applied also to languages. John Fotheringham on his blog Language Mastery gives a good example of Pareto rule in the Japanese language. Despite 50,000 characters described in “The Great Han–Japanese Dictionary”, the Japanese Ministry of Education selects the most common use and limit it to  2136. This means that you should learn 2136 symbols to be able to read most of the Japanese publications. It’s just 4% of “words” to be able to communicate. This is the efficient way to learn languages.

How to say hello in different languages is not enough

What is the Minimum Effective Dose (MED) in learning a foreign language according to Tim Ferris? You should learn 1,200 highest frequency words and their usage with duolingo.com, iKnow.jp, or memrise.com. These apps are based on MED approach – it’s built-in, so it’s pretty easy way to start.  As it is written in the Duolingo Effectiveness Study it takes 34 hours to learn the equivalent of a first college semester’s worth of Spanish. The key to success here is to be as much systematic as you can. But don’t worry. Whenever you will stop, Duolingo will spam you in all possible ways to remind you that you skipped the lesson :-).

75 most common phrases in 5 different languages

It will take some time to master these 1200 words in the selected language. In the meantime I collected the most useful phrases in the languages of the countries I visit quite often. These will allow you to manage in hotels, restaurants, on the railway stations, airports, bars and other places of interest for each business traveller.

Keep in mind that behind some phrases stands culture, local customs, and tradition which is not commented in the table below. For example, if you order a beer in China (Qing gěi wo yibei píjiu), don’t forget to add “cold” (Bīnglěng) otherwise, you will be served with the beer in the room temperature :-).

Category breakdown

Use the search field above the table to list the categories which you are interested most:

Basic phrases and greetings – basically how to say hello in different languages and some more daily speech phrases.

Language – how to ask somebody to speak slower or repeat.

Shopping & Money – it’s too expensive 🙂 and some more useful phrases in shopping.

Transportation – at what time my transport departs?

Eating & Drinking – how to order the local dish and some more …

Directions – useful phrases on how to get to …

Sightseeing – how to ask about what I should visit around my destination.

Accommodations – do I have a reservation? And some more phrases on how to manage in the hotel.

Health & Emergencies – how to ask for help.

Use Google Translate to check the pronunciation of the phrases.

Featured image source: pixabay.com