Category:

Languages

Bulgaria

"Merci" is how you say "thank you" in which language?

By Nick Nasev

October 14, 2024

1

min read

"Merci" is how you say "thank you" in which language?

Of course, in the following...

✴️ Armenian
✴️ Bulgarian
✴️ Catalan
✴️ Farsi (Persian)
✴️ Luxembourgish
✴️ Romanian
✴️ Swiss German

oh, and in French (I almost forgot).

It's true! Bulgarian, for instance, adopted "merci" in the 1930s, first ironically, but eventually as a simple and "sophisticated" alternative to the relatively formal "blagodarya".

I had to laugh the first I heard a Bulgarian say "merci mnogo" ("thanks very much"), and note that unlike in French, the Bulgarians roll the "r".

Note that in most of these languages "merci" is only one of the options for saying "thank you". It's often the informal version, much like "thanks", "ta" or "cheers" in English.

Мерси много за вниманието!

Picture: "merci" in Farsi

Hi, zdravo, bok, zdravei, g'day! I’m Nick Nasev, an Aussie of Balkan background living in the UK. I’ve been a translator and editor for 20+ years. If you have an interest in languages and all things Balkan, Eastern European, Australian and beyond, along with a dash of corny and irony, then stick with me as I rant about my experiences and stories.

Your text deserves to be taken seriously; have it translated and edited with confidence.

info@nicknasev.com

Contact me with the details of your text at info@nicknasev.com

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August 21, 2023

5

min read

Smoker’s remorse… or how false friends can be deeply expressive

🟰 Words that look the same or similar in two languages but have two, at times radically, different meanings are called “false friends”.

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June 22, 2023

2

min read

So what are Fantales?

They are chocolate-covered chewy caramels 🍬 that were often so hard to bite into that they kept many dentists in business 🦷. Nothing particularly unique so far, you might think.

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May 30, 2023

1

min read

The personal touch

Translation can often be a very sedentary existence, plugging away in front of a laptop, with little or no face-to-face contact with clients👨🏻‍💻

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April 12, 2023

4

min read

“You can find the Doonas in Manchester”

Now this might sound a bit random 🤨 but this is something you’ll hear all the time, in all places… in department stores in Australia 🇦🇺. How come? 🧐

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September 15, 2024

2

min read

15 years cancer-free!!!

And I know because of an annual procedure a work colleague advised me to do...

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June 14, 2024

5

min read

It's Men's Health Week... and I'm 15 years cancer-free!!!

The story of how I found out by chance that I no longer had cancer

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February 3, 2023

3

min read

Cancer and gallows humour: Thank you for the flowers 💐; I hope they die before I do! 😏

WARNING: potentially triggering material. Very, very dark humour about cancer ahead. 4 February is World Cancer Day and… erm… conveniently, the day after is the anniversary (15 years now) of being given the oh so exciting news that I had testicular cancer…

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