How to say “thing” in 50 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 Georgian, where რამ is the 2nd most used word.
- Afrikaans dinge #235
- Albanian gjë #65
- Arabic شيء #28
- Armenian իր #30
- Bengali জিনিস #174
- Bosnian stvar #171
- Bulgarian онзи Used in indicating a person or thing that is… #425
- Catalan coses #135
- Chinese 好事 good thing #495
- Croatian stvar #169
- Czech věci #197
- Danish ting #151
- Dutch die that; referring to a thing or a person… #23
- English something An uncertain or unspecified thing; one thing #107
- Esperanto afero #231
- Estonian asi a thing #110
- French chose #91
- Galician cousas #118
- Georgian რამ something, thing #2
- German dinge #385
- Greek πράγματα thing, entity, object #159
- Hebrew חיבור a thing connecting things, a joining in a… #2,185
- Hindi चीज़ thing, object, item #1,068
- Hungarian dolog thing, object #183
- Icelandic tilefni reason for doing a thing #1,705
- Indonesian sesuatu something; a thing uncertain, undetected, or… #72
- Italian cose thing, matter #136
- Korean 것 thing; something; that which; what; used to… #27
- Latvian lietas #200
- Lithuanian dalykas thing, object #315
- Macedonian нешта #519
- Malay benda object, thing, stuff, item, good #219
- Malayalam ഉള്ളത് that which is present; the available thing #191
- Norwegian ting a thing #158
- Persian چیز #277
- Polish rzeczy #161
- Portuguese coisa #68
- Romanian lucru thing; object #140
- Russian такое something like that, something like this,… #167
- Serbian stvar #179
- Slovak vec #152
- Slovenian stvar #162
- Spanish cosas #124
- Swedish saker a thing #203
- Tagalog bagay thing; object; item #151
- Tamil நல்லது good, good thing, that which is good #93
- Telugu వస్తువు a thing, article, matter, substance #475
- Turkish şey #17
- Ukrainian речі thing, object #288
- Urdu چیز #146
Knowing the word is the easy half.
Using it with someone who speaks the language is the half that sticks.