Sneezing Around the World

In the tail end of yesterday’s post, I wrote that Greek at some point used the word ptairo to mean “sneeze.” This is significant, just because ptairo kind of sounds like a sneeze — maybe along the lines of ptooie with a more explosive ending. So I got to thinking: Do other languages’ word for “sneeze” sound like sneezing? Using the magic of Google Translate, I’ve made a short list.

Whenever possible, I used the phonetic rendering of the word. Some languages such as Farsi, Arabic and Hebrew I left out because a phonetic spelling wasn’t offered on Google Translate. In many cases, I wasn’t sure if the word being translated was the noun or the verb — not all languages use the same word the way English does — but they’re all referring to the sudden rocketing of snot from the nasal passages.

Decide for yourself:

• Afrikaans: nies
• Albanian: teshtij
• Albanian: p’rrshtal
• Azerbaijani: asqırmaq
• Belarusian: čchać
• Bengali: hām̐ci
• Bulgarian: kikhane
• Chinese: dǎ pēntì
• Croatian: kihati
• Czech: kýchnout
• Danish: nyse
• Dutch: niezen
• Esperanto: terni
• Estonian: aevastama
• Filipino: pagbabahin
• Finish: aivastaa
• French: éternuer
• German: niesen
• Greek: ftárnisma (and yes, I notice that this isn’t ptairo, but that first syllable isn’t not far off)
• Gujarti: chīṅka
• Hatian Creole: etènye
• Hindi: chīṅka
• Hungarian: tüsszentés
• Indonesian: bersin
• Italian: starnutire
• Japanese: kushami
• Korean: jaechaegi
• Latin: sternuisse
• Latvian: šķaudīt
• Lithuanian: čiaudėti
• Macedonian: kivnete
• Maltese: tgħatas
• Norwegian: nyse
• Polish: kichać
• Portuguese: espirrar
• Romanian: strănut
• Russian: chikhatʹ
• Serbian: kijanje
• Slovak: kýchnuť
• Spanish: estornudar
• Swahili: kuchafya
• Swedish: nysa
• Tamil: tum'mu
• Thai: cām
• Turkish: hapşırmak
• Ukrainian: chkhaty
• Vietnamese: nhảy mui
• Welsh: tisian
• Yiddish: nysn

My favorites? Czech and Turkish. The one I’m most disappointed in? Yiddish. Come on, Yiddish. With your rich library of throat-clearing sounds, I expected more from you.