Favorite new words and expressions in a foreign language

We all try to learn basic expressions of a local language when we travel. It is nice, it helps to open the right doors and sometimes play like local to get local and not tourist price;-)

Btw the only country I’ve been to 3(!) times and still dunno ANY word in its language is Hungary.

So here we go!

Arabic countries and Indonesia: funny thing but arabic “masallah” (God bless) means “problems” in Indonesian. And I try to memorise it as two russian names “MashaAlla”.

Brasil: of course “nossa”, which means surprise, unbelievable etc.

France: I adore how French people pronounce “j’adore”!

Germany: “fernweh” and “heimweh” which means wanderlust and exact opposite — homesickness.

India: “shabash!” (with a nice pat to the back on a friend) is the Hindi equivalent to the “bravo!” or “very good!”

Italy+USA: “capisce” (pronounced cah-PEESH) is an Italian word that is used in American slang to say “got it” or “understand.” The correct word in Italian would be capisci (pronounced cah-PEE-shee) to address the second person informally, a.k.a. you.

I also love how italians say “boh” which means “I don’t know”.

Myanmar: “che zu ba” means “thank you” in Burmese.

Turkey: “falan filan” meaning stuff like that or etcetera. Actually I like this whole turkish tradition to add rhyme words: sujuk mujuk, peynyr meynyr etc.

What are yours favorite?