Oy! Owch! Itai!

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What do you say when you hurt yourself? It may not have occurred to you that people in different countries say ‘owch’ differently – it’s certainly not the kind of thing teachers tell you when you’re learning foreign languages! I recently came across this excellent list of pain words, which tells you how different countries express themselves when they get hurt.

Here they are:

Arabic أخ (Aakh!)
Bahasa Indonesia Sakit!
Chinese 哎哟 Aiyo!
哎呀 Aiya!
Croatian Avaj!

Jao!

Danish Av!
Japanese いたい! (いたっ!いったっ!いったたたっ!いって~)
Itai! (Ita! Itta! Ittatata!)
Maltese Ajma! (Ay-ma!)
Persian آخ or واخ (pronounced aakh and vaakh, respectively)
Serbian Aaa!

Au!

Joj!

Tagalog (Philippines) Aray!
Thai โอ้ย Oy!

 

Urdu/Gujarati/Hindi Oh baa!

Oh maa!
(Gujarati): Oh baaprey!

So maybe the next time you stub your toe while abroad, you might like to try one of these new words! If you know the word for ‘owch’ in a language that’s not listed here, please share it with us!

 

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Lauren Webb, Senior Project Manager

About the Author

Lauren is one of Veritas' Project Managers, and has always been fascinated by languages. With a degree in Translation, and having worked periodically as a freelance translator, she has a thorough understanding of both sides of the translation process, which ensures the smooth running of projects.

Discussion

  1. Paul W Dixon  May 31, 2011

    Portuguese: Ai! (pronounced like “eye” but with the first sound prolonged – the worse the pain, the more prolonged so an injection would be /ái/ but the extraction of a wisdom tooth would be /aaaaaaaai/)

    PAUL

    (reply)
  2. Ed  May 31, 2011

    The Persian sounds are incorrect. Typically they would say آخ or واخ (pronounced aakh and vaakh, respectively). Persian has no /w/ sound like in window. The reported word “wi” may be an incorrect representation of وای (pronounced vaay). “ukh” is sometimes used in combination with “aakh”

    (reply)
  3. Veritas Language Solutions  June 1, 2011

    Thank you Paul, that’s really interesting!

    Ed: Thank you for pointing out my error – I really should have double-checked this with one of our translators before putting the blog up! I have now amended the article, and apologise for any confusion this may have caused.

    (reply)

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