How to say “book” in 48 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 Hebrew, where ספר is the 321st most used word.
- Afrikaans boeke #475
- Albanian librin #902
- Arabic كتاب #575
- Armenian գրքեր #688
- Basque liburu #397
- Bengali বই #452
- Bosnian knjigu #837
- Bulgarian книга #821
- Catalan llibre #679
- Croatian knjigu #858
- Czech knihu #1,251
- Danish bog #735
- Dutch boek to book, to reserve #620
- Esperanto libro a book #502
- Estonian raamat #956
- Finnish kirja #1,659
- French livre #653
- Galician libro #633
- German buch #710
- Greek βιβλίο #588
- Hebrew ספר #321
- Hindi किताब #1,591
- Hungarian könyvet #1,482
- Icelandic bækur #1,068
- Indonesian buku #399
- Italian libro #666
- Korean 책 #520
- Latvian grāmatu #821
- Lithuanian knygą #560
- Macedonian книга #577
- Malay kitab #2,060
- Malayalam പുസ്തകം #378
- Norwegian bok #1,083
- Persian کتاب #367
- Polish książki #1,413
- Portuguese livro #585
- Romanian carte #814
- Russian книга #1,709
- Serbian knjigu #821
- Slovak knihu #586
- Slovenian knjigo #403
- Spanish libro #607
- Tagalog libro #470
- Tamil புத்தகம் #737
- Turkish kitap #786
- Ukrainian книга #1,154
- Urdu کتاب book, manuscript, volume #910
- Vietnamese sách #480
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.