Say hello to the world

The "r" in French is a soft guttural sound made at the back of the throat — not rolled like Spanish. "Bonjour" is safe any time of day until evening.

In Spain, "c" before e/i is pronounced like "th" — so "gracias" sounds like "GRATH-yas". In Latin America it's simply "GRAS-yas". Both are correct!

Brazilian and European Portuguese sound quite different. Brazilians speak more openly and clearly; Europeans swallow vowels. "Oi" is very Brazilian — in Portugal it can sound rude!

"G" at the end of a word sounds like "k" in standard German. The "ch" in "ich" is a soft hissing sound — not "ick" or "ish". Regional accents vary wildly!

"Ciao" is both hello and goodbye — but only use it with people you know. With strangers or elders, always use "Buongiorno". Double consonants in Italian are pronounced longer.

Japanese has three scripts: Hiragana (curved, phonetic), Katakana (angular, for foreign words) and Kanji (Chinese-origin characters). Most sentences mix all three!

Mandarin is tonal — the same syllable means different things at different pitches. "Mā" (mother), "má" (hemp), "mǎ" (horse), "mà" (scold). Getting tones wrong can cause confusion!

Arabic is written right to left. The greeting "As-salāmu ʿalaykum" is used across 20+ Muslim-majority countries and is always answered with "Wa ʿalaykum as-salām". The "ʿ" is a soft throat sound called ayin.

"Namaste" is more than a greeting — the gesture (Anjali Mudra) symbolises the divine in one person bowing to the divine in another. It's used across India, Nepal and in yoga globally.

The Russian formal greeting "Здравствуйте" is notoriously hard — the first "в" is silent, so it sounds like "ZDRAS-tvuy-tye". Russians appreciate any attempt at their language!

Korean (Hangul) was invented in 1443 by King Sejong specifically to improve literacy. Each block is a syllable made of consonant + vowel. It can be learned in a few days!

Swahili is one of Africa's most widely spoken languages with over 200 million speakers. It's the national language of Kenya and Tanzania and a lingua franca across East and Central Africa.

Modern Greek uses the same alphabet as ancient Greek but sounds quite different. The letter "γ" before "e" or "i" sounds like "y", which is why "Γειά" is pronounced "Ya".

Turkish uses vowel harmony — vowels in suffixes change to match the vowel in the root word. It makes Turkish very musical but tricky to learn. The dotless "ı" and dotted "İ" are two different letters!

In Thai, gender affects how you end sentences. Women add "ค่ะ" (kha) for polite speech; men add "ครับ" (khrap). Thai is tonal with 5 tones and has no spaces between words in writing!

Hebrew is written right to left with no capital letters. "Shalom" is one of the world's most versatile greetings — it means hello, goodbye AND peace all at once.

"Kumusta" comes from the Spanish "¿Cómo estás?" — a reminder of 300 years of Spanish colonial history. Filipino also borrows heavily from English, so many Filipinos mix both languages naturally (called "Taglish").

Vietnamese has 6 tones marked by diacritics above/below vowels. The same word at different tones has completely different meanings. "Ma" can mean ghost, mother, rice seedling, tomb or horse depending on tone!

Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is one of the easiest languages for English speakers — it has no tenses, no gendered nouns and no tones. It's spoken by 270 million people across 17,000 islands!