How to say “smoke” in 37 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 Afrikaans, where rook is the 645th most used word.
- Afrikaans rook #645
- Albanian tym #2,067
- Basque kea #1,196
- Bosnian dim #2,236
- Catalan fumar to smoke #2,216
- Croatian dim #2,301
- Danish ryger to smoke #883
- Dutch rook to smoke #1,585
- English smoking To inhale and exhale the smoke from a burning… #2,315
- Esperanto fumas to smoke #2,046
- French fumer to smoke #2,265
- Galician fume to smoke #1,929
- Georgian ვეწევი to smoke #1,175
- German rauchen to smoke, give off smoke #2,003
- Hebrew עשן #1,941
- Icelandic reykja to smoke #856
- Indonesian merokok to smoke #1,333
- Italian fumo #2,167
- Lithuanian rūkyti to smoke smoke from a cigar, pipe, etc #1,510
- Macedonian чад #2,113
- Malay merokok to smoke #1,323
- Malayalam പുക smoke, the visible gaseous and particulate… #723
- Norwegian røyk to smoke #1,724
- Persian دود #1,399
- Portuguese fumar to smoke, to deliberately inhale smoke #1,913
- Romanian fum #2,148
- Serbian dim #2,184
- Slovak fajčiť to smoke #1,438
- Slovenian dim #992
- Spanish fumar to smoke #2,422
- Swedish röka to smoke #1,962
- Tagalog usok smoke; black or dark smoke #925
- Tamil புகை smoke, fume #831
- Telugu పొగ #746
- Turkish duman smoke, roke #2,370
- Urdu دھواں #2,272
- Vietnamese khói #1,639
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.