Buy the poster

hiyathousand

A fun cheat sheet for saying a few words in almost any language — not quite a thousand translations, but close. If you've got the printed version, scan the QR for the live sheet and tap any word to hear it said.

hiya.texs.org

Aloha, Ahoj, Ahlan

Hawaiian, Czech and Arabic share no ancestor and no continent, yet all three open hello the same way: an open “ah” from low in the chest, more felt than said. A surprising number of the world's hellos start there — which is why the greeting is column one.

Flags are for countries

Languages don't respect borders, so each row flies one flag plus up to three more: English takes the US, Australia and Canada. Arabic flies the Arab League flag — no single state owns it. Spanish is official in twenty countries and couldn't fit them all if it tried. Quechua flies the wiphala, Esperanto its green star; neither has a country at all.

The casual form won

Most languages keep a polite how are you and a casual one; this poster prints the casual. German's Was geht? over Wie geht es Ihnen? — same call in Turkish, in Japanese, everywhere. A few are hyper-local: ¿Qué onda? is Mexican, Foi mal is Brazilian, 好正 is Hong Kong.

Two lines per cell

The top line is what you'd say out loud; the native script sits under it. Latin-script rows get one line — there, the spelling is the pronunciation. Romanisations are reading aids, not ISO transliteration. Tone marks appear for Mandarin, Thai and Cantonese only. Speaker counts are native plus second-language, rounded hard — which is how English clears a billion.