How to say “badly” in 34 languages
Every one of these is a word that turns up in ordinary speech, not a dictionary curiosity — the number beside it is where it ranks in that language.
It is commonest in Romanian, where rău is the 92nd most used word.
- Albanian hall badly, wrongly #2,050
- Armenian վատ #210
- Basque gaizki bad, badly #193
- Bulgarian лошо badly, not well #364
- Catalan mal badly, poorly #240
- Czech špatně #507
- Danish værre worse, more bad, more badly #564
- Dutch nodig necessarily, badly, urgently #118
- English bad Badly; poorly #225
- Esperanto malbone #341
- Estonian halvasti badly, poorly #831
- Finnish huonosti badly, poorly #1,251
- French mal #163
- Galician mal #208
- Georgian ცუდად badly, ill #387
- German schlecht badly, poorly, not well #550
- Greek άσχημα #544
- Hungarian rosszul #555
- Icelandic illa badly, poorly #224
- Italian male badly, wrongly #197
- Latvian slikti bad, badly; adverbial form of slikts #378
- Lithuanian blogai badly, poorly #286
- Macedonian лошо badly, poorly #221
- Norwegian dårlig badly, poorly #356
- Persian بد poorly, badly #206
- Polish źle badly, wrongly #398
- Portuguese mal #211
- Romanian rău badly, poorly #92
- Russian плохо bad, badly #395
- Slovak zle bad, badly #325
- Slovenian slabo #211
- Spanish mal badly, poorly, ill #218
- Swedish illa #346
- Ukrainian непогано not bad, not badly, quite well #947
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.