Even if we have no actual grasp of the language (which is very common here) we’ll still say comme ci comme ça, je ne sais quoi, voila etc. Guess it might be different because the general level of English comprehension is going to be better than the reverse here.

40 comments

  1. Ummm…do we? I have never been greeted with Hola or Ciao in England.

    But yes in France you do get phrases like that among younger people of a certain kind, though not as common as it would be in other countries with higher English proficiency (I went to Germany recently and apparently it’s now fashionable to say “Sorry” instead of “Entschuldigung”?). The most common ones I hear are WTF (either pronounced as “double-veh teh eff” or “ouate zeuh feuhk”) or “Why not?”

  2. Same here, it’s perfectly normal to say ciao, hola, bon appétit, voilà, priviet, hejdå, tere, whatever. It’s also perfectly normal to say hello, though most would say it in a weird Finnish way like *helouu*.

    More general things than greetings are also thrown in from English occasionally. Stuff like “fifty-fifty”, you hear that quite often.

  3. Yeah, in Spain we use some foreign expressions sometimes. But most of them are to say hello or bye. One example that I can think of right now is “ciao”. Though I think that we don’t use phrases like the ones you’ve mentioned, we generally just use single words and not very often.

  5. A fun thing it happened here is that some people started using chao/chau (ciao in Spanish) because the influence of Argentinian inmigrants in Spain. But of course they got the word from Italians that migrated to Argentina a century ago.

  6. Non-German greetings or Goodbyes frequently (or at least sometimes) heard in Germany:

    Hi

    Hello

    Salut

    Ciao (only as Goodbye, not as Hello)

    Adios

    Adieu

    Bye Bye

    ​

    Am I missing one?

    In Bavaria we say Servus, which is Latin. Does that count?

  7. This remindes me of a stranger in Portugal, who said “Danke!” as I hold the door open for him. First I was really confused how he would know I’m German. But then I realised it might just the standard “I-mix-up-all-European-languages-for-phrases” like I do, too: Sorry, merci, dank u wel, ciao, gracias…

  8. I feel like **a lot** of English get thrown into Norwegian. At least when speaking to people my own age (20s). I often feel like I’m in the Julekalkender where half of my sentences are Norwegian whilst the other half is in English. It might be more common with younger people than older people here.

  9. We use ciao all the time in Swiss German, same as salut, merci, pardon, sorry, voilà, fucking-, shit, big-ass. English loans often have a bit more restricted sense than within English. A “game” is not any game, but a video game.

    In some more bilingual parts of the city of Fribourg, code switching between French and Swiss German is very common.

  10. In french we don’t use foreign greetings to say hello (although « hello » can be used sometimes), but those foreign « goodbye » are common : Ciao, Bye, Tchüss.

  11. In France they say “week end” instead of “fin de semaine” since at least I started French in school over 30 years ago.

    You seem however a little more literate in the use of borrowings than Americans, which constantly use wrong/broken Spanish: “no bueno”, “adiós” (like it’s forever)…

  12. Oh my God…generally people don’t use an insane amount of English in everyday speech here, but some do, and those who use only a bit of it thrown around here and there are very widespread.

    But as I said, although there aren’t many who take it to an extreme extent, there ARE those that do. On the r/romania subreddit for example, I kid you not, there are entire paragraphs seemingly written half in English and half in Romanian for absolutely no reason whatsoever.

    I fully understand the use of English when dealing with certain modern terms that haven’t been given a good translation, but otherwise throwing in a bunch of random English sentences after every few sentences in your native language only makes you look like a fucking jackass.

    I genuinely believe that there are people who speak English better than their native language which they use and are exposed to everyday, and that’s just some bullshit in all honesty.

  13. Flemish is heavily influenced by French so we use a shit ton of French words in our daily vocabulary.

    English words have also become very common, *everyone* uses sorry these days with the occasional ‘pardon’ depending on the situation.

    Some German words tend to be used as well, like überhaupt.

  14. It could be an opinionated and biased answer but IMO it depends a lot on how old you are and I guess where you live, younger people and cities citizens (especially northern ones like Milan, Turin, …) tend to put more English words in a sentence than older people or rural citizens.

  15. From Spanish people use a lot of “gracias” and “hasta”. From English we use all sort of words. Specially people who use English at work, like it’s my case, we end up using English words in every day speech, which is kind of annoying, and i try to catch myself before saying

    We also use a looooot of “Ya” for yes, so I guess that counts as using German.

    Edit: we also use things like ASAP, with the same meaning as in English, but most people say “AZAP”

  17. “Sorry” is probably the most common. “Cool” and “super” are somewhat common, though I don’t know if we got the latter one directly from English. “Fifty-fifty” is the only phrase I can think of that’s commonly used.

    Worth mentioning is that Czechs have come up with phrases combining Czech and English, like

    – (v)o co go – “what’s going on?”, (v)o = about, co = what (haven’t heard this one in ages though)
    – baj (v)oko – “approximately”, baj = Czech spelling of “by”, (v)oko = eye

  18. The most commonly used English word by Italians is surely ‘ok’…if we can count that as an English word?

    There are several other English words that are fairly common.

    But I’d say greetings are nearly always in Italian here…I hear the occasional foreign greeting, but I think it’s rare.

  19. In Portugal, younger people tend to use a lot of English mixed up with Portuguese. However, that has more to do with American influence. We say “whatever” a lot, we say “hey”, we say “what the ****”.

    There are some words that literally came from English and are on the dictionary as Portuguese words. Take-away, merchandising, franchising, stock, streaming, wrestling, sprint and many others

  20. We use Merci very very often, because the Bulgarian word is too long, I guess. We’d also use fuck and shit. And there’s a fashion among some younger and up to 45-y.o. people working in offices – IT jobs, finance, marketing, etc. to use 30-50% English words with added Bulgarian suffixes. Sometimes it’s ridiculous because it would be shorter and easier to say it in Bulgarian.

  23. The English “Hi” (written “Hæ” in Icelandic), is the most common informal greeting in Iceland and has been for decades. Various, mostly English, words and catchphrases are used in daily speech, especially among younger people, teens and children. They tend to be transitory. For example, some years ago “Oh. My. God!” was very popular among kids and younger teens. Before that it was “sjitt!/sitt!” (“shit!”). I don’t hear it as much now, but that may be because Covid has turned me into a recluse in the last couple of years.

    “Fokk!” (aka “Fuck!”) is an interesting case. It became popular through expletive-laden American movies (as did “shit!”), but the language already had the phrase “allt í fokki” = “all messed up”, where “fokk” just means “a mess” and is unrelated to the English word. “fuck” seems to have merged with the older Icelandic meaning of “fokk” and came to be considered a mild expletive in Icelandic, whereas in English it is one of the worst.

  24. Hi, hello, bye, cu/cya … apart from that you have your typical posh business student/consultant type that can’t speak a sentence without weaving in a random English business slang word.

    There is even a term for the latter: Beratersprech (Consultant speak).

  25. In Estonian, not just English, sometimes several languages in a single sentence.

    About to end the phone call, “*Okay, davai, ciao*” haha.
    Most common English words used in a coversation in Estonian would probably be okay and sorry.

  26. In Czech Republic we use “ahoj”, which is adopted from the English sailors/pirates greetings “ahoy”. Probably because we are one of the few countries in Europe that has no sea

  27. Very, very common.
    Often it will be used for things that don’t have a commonly used Danish counterpart such as “a no-go”, “aesthetic”, and some terms in business or job related Danish.
    Another examples are stuff like “sorry”, “my bad” or “got it”. It depends on the person, but there are also quite a few people who use “yes”, but more as a filler word than a “ja”.

  28. my sweet summerchild…german is in the process of assimilating into english. If you hear modern kids talk, they’re already speaking 30% english…

  29. Regarding greetings, I use *Hello* sometimes. Never out loud though, only when texting, and I’ve had other people using it with me too. It seems to be common.

    Then, there are a bunch of other English words we use, it would be too long to list but to name a few : weekend, shopping, parking, jogging, e-mail, streaming, burn out… Always pronounced in the most French way possible.

  31. I recently moved to Croatia and it’s kinda surprising how much English is spoken with Croatian. Like entire conversations will be in Croatian and then randomly switch to English and then back.

    And ik this isn’t for my benefit- I’ve heard my friends doing it when I’m in another room and not part of the conversation.

  32. In Dutch speaking Belgium the swear words are very common, mixed with our own. Godverfuckingdomme! Also sorry is used by everybody.

  33. All the time man, I sometimes randomly start a sentence and forget the words in dutch and i’ll continue saying them in english.

  34. Svengelska, English words get thrown into sentences in Swedish because it either fits better or because we can’t remember the Swedish words (happens way too often for me)

  35. So England isn’t in Europe ?

    In French we use a bunch of incorrect english words in everyday life, but sometimes we also use “hello” instead of our own greetings

    Ciao is also used btw

  37. I speak a lot of English with my siblings and people in general cuz I just find it more comfortable than Finnish. I also speak English to my cat. But also Finnish, cuz he’s bilingual. When I say “Hi , boy” he looks at me and when I say his name, he looks at me. XD

    I speak FinGlish

  38. Our language is basically 50% English at this point, to the dismay of older people. Sometimes you just can’t come up with a good Dutch word and everyone will understand you anyways. When I was in England I was smug thinking that no one could understand what I said but you could probably follow it somewhat.

  39. Switzerland is fucking mental for forcing the odd English word in and it drives me mad – it really fucks the flow of a sentence up.

    “Challenge” in German is “Herausforderung” … but that’s obviously too much for some Zürchers and they’ll say “Das isch ein Challenge xsi.” (That was a challenge) except challenge doesn’t sound quite right.

    I don’t think it’s strictly English but Swiss also like to use “Tip top” for everything remotely ok. Just reminds me of Snatch.

    They also have taken English words and given them amended meanings; “Handy” – mobile phone. “Beamer” – projector. “Tumbler” – tumble dryer. Plus more.

    Otherwise they like to translate their own sayings into English and they never make any sense.

  40. We’ve beginning to have a problem with that. Young children(and even older kids) are becoming half literate morons. The talk in macedonian, but they re adopting regular every day nouns from english. They sound autistic, but the sad thing is, they think it’s cool and their parents don’t give a fuck.

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