How to say “forgive” in 33 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 Basque, where barkatu is the 61st most used word.
- Afrikaans vergewe to forgive #393
- Albanian fal to forgive, pardon #152
- Armenian ներել to forgive #1,047
- Basque barkatu to forgive #61
- Bosnian oprostiti to forgive, pardon #1,624
- Bulgarian извинявам to forgive, excuse, pardon #1,366
- Catalan perdona to pardon, forgive, excuse #502
- Chinese 原諒 to forgive; to excuse; to pardon #1,692
- Croatian oprostiti to forgive, pardon #1,406
- Danish tilgive to forgive #1,705
- Dutch excuseer to excuse, to pardon, to forgive #871
- English excuse To forgive; to pardon; to overlook #344
- Esperanto pardonu to forgive, pardon #125
- French pardonner to pardon, forgive #2,436
- German verzeihen to forgive; to pardon; to excuse #1,378
- Greek συγχωρείτε to forgive, pardon, excuse #508
- Hebrew סלח to forgive #620
- Icelandic fyrirgefa to forgive #1,492
- Indonesian maafkan to forgive; to condone #266
- Italian scusate to excuse, forgive, pardon #806
- Latvian piedot to forgive #2,475
- Macedonian извини to forgive, excuse, pardon #156
- Malayalam ക്ഷമിക്കുക to forgive #1,052
- Norwegian tilgi to forgive #930
- Polish wybacz to forgive #536
- Portuguese desculpe to forgive #307
- Romanian ierta to forgive #2,259
- Serbian oprostiti to forgive, pardon #1,787
- Spanish perdona to pardon, excuse, forgive #1,249
- Swedish förlåt to forgive #186
- Tamil மன்னி to forgive, excuse, pardon #1,732
- Turkish affet to forgive, to pardon, to overlook, to excuse #1,948
- Vietnamese tha to forgive #766
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.