How to say “distance” in 31 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 Polish, where od is the 43rd most used word.
- Afrikaans afstand #1,001
- Arabic ابتعد to move away from, distance oneself from #553
- Armenian հեռավորություն #1,461
- Bengali দূর #444
- Bulgarian разстояние #1,591
- Catalan distància #1,566
- Chinese 行程 route; travel distance #1,828
- Danish afstand #1,723
- Dutch afstand #1,282
- English long Over a great distance in space #180
- French distance to distance, outdistance #2,039
- Galician distancia #1,436
- Greek απόσταση #1,670
- Hebrew מרחק #1,450
- Hindi दूरी #871
- Indonesian panjang having much distance from one terminating… #647
- Italian distanza distance, interval #1,922
- Korean 멀리 afar, at a distance #386
- Malay jarak #929
- Malayalam ദൂരം #333
- Norwegian avstand #1,912
- Persian فاصله distance, space between things #561
- Polish od indicates separation, distance, loss of… #43
- Portuguese distância #1,473
- Slovak vzdialenosť #1,700
- Spanish distancia #1,620
- Swedish nivå distance relative to a given reference… #2,116
- Tagalog layo distance; farness #680
- Tamil செல்ல at a distance #86
- Turkish yüksek Having a great distance between its bottom… #488
- Urdu فاصلہ #1,541
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.