A Reddit user recently asked people from countries where English isn’t the native language to share the English words they use in regular conversation. Here are the best responses:


Oxygen

#1
“In France, a lot of ‘ouat ze feuk’ (WTF).”
Hyperbawl / Via reddit.com

#2
“The French say le selfie, le feedback, le brunch.”
bobbie-m / Via reddit.com

#3
In Denmark they use lots of English words, but the most common by far are ‘sh*t’ and ‘fu*k.’”
Marsrath / Via reddit.com

#4
“We say ‘make sense’ a lot in Sweden, but modified to be more Swedish. We say it more like ‘make-a sense,’ which basically substitutes a ‘to’ before ‘make’ by adding the ‘a’ at the end. Pronounced ‘make ah sense.’”
Targaryen-ish / Via reddit.com


Nickelodeon

#5
“Norwegians use ‘Texas’ as an adjective in describing parties, as in, ‘That party was Texas!’ In this context it means both ‘huge and epic’ and ‘probably embarrassing for everybody involved.’”
thosearesomewords / Via reddit.com

#6
“In Finnish, we use ‘high five’ pretty regularly, as well as ‘fine,’ in the sense of something being acceptable.”
Mipellys / Via reddit.com

#7
“There’s no real word for yes or no in Irish. So if you go to a Gaeltacht area you will hear native Irish speakers chatting in Irish to one another but saying ‘ya’ or ‘yes’ every few seconds because it’s a useful word.”
Elysiumthistime / Via reddit.com

#8
“I was speaking with a Portuguese man the other day, and apparently they call bowling by its English name.”
joemiller02 / Via reddit.com

#9
“Japanese people say ‘bye-bye’ and ‘okay.’”
STANDOTSUKAI / Via reddit.com

#10
“Dutch-speaking person here. We have loads of loanwords from English. Even verbs. The interesting part is that the Dutch conjugation rules still apply for verbs loaned from English. ‘I deleted’ becomes ‘Ik deletete.’”
ColorMeColorful / Via reddit.com

#11
“‘Sorry,’ ‘ok,’ and ‘cool’ are the most common ones in Czech. Even my grandma uses those.”
prObably_nuts__me / Via reddit.com

#12
“In Poland we often use ‘sory’ (pronounced a bit differently than ‘sorry’) instead of ‘przepraszam.’”
lapishelper / Via reddit.com

#13
“Filipino here. Everyone calls you ma’am/sir.”
LardHop / Via reddit.com

#14
“I’m Croatian and the English words that we use a lot are ‘random,’ ‘accidentally,’ and ‘officially.’”
princessA611 / Via reddit.com

#15
“In Polish ‘no hey’ can be used to say hello and also goodbye.”
immapikachu / Via reddit.com

#16
“There are lots of English words used in Italian, sometimes idiosyncratically: ‘public relations,’ ‘flash’ (for USB drive), ‘feeling’ (for romantic chemistry).”
SuperPantaleon / Via reddit.com

#17
“In Germany a lot of people just kinda swap in the direct English translations for words to sound young and trendy. Nouns like ‘pants,’ ‘bag,’ ‘backpack,’ ‘bike,’ etc. are popular.”
Zack1018 / Via reddit.com

More info: r/AskReddit, H/T BuzzFeed, Preview photo credit: thosearesomewords / reddit.com, Nickelodeon