Traveling Abroad? Learn How to Say Tomato!
By Vanessa Richins
Someday soon I dream of traveling around the world.
I am fascinated by other cultures, especially the foods and languages.
In fact, I have a dream of being able to read and write in 11 different languages. So far I know English, Spanish at an intermediate level, and a bit in a few other languages.
As I was idly thinking tonight, I realized that I only knew how to say tomato in 2 different languages - English and Spanish. How would I ever survive in another country if I didn’t know how to ask for my favorite vegetable?
I hopped on over to Google to use their translator. It features 42 languages. When I typed in “I want to grow a tomato”, I learned that I need to say “Voglio crescere un pomodoro.” when in Italy.
Without further ado, here are their translations for the word “tomato”.
- Albanian - domate
- Arabic - الطماطم
- Bulgarian - домат
- Catalan - tomàquet
- Chinese (Simplified) - 番茄
- Chinese (Traditional) - 番茄
- Croatian - paradajz
- Czech - rajče
- Danish - tomat
- Dutch - tomaat
- English - tomato
- Estonian - tomat
- Filipino - kamatis
- Finnish - tomaatti
- French - tomate
- Galician - tomate
- German - Tomaten
- Greek - ντομάτα
- Hebrew - עגבניה
- Hindi - टमाटर
- Hungarian - paradicsom
- Indonesian - tomat
- Italian - pomodoro
- Japanese - トマト
- Korean - 토마토
- Latvian - tomātu
- Lithiuanian - pomidorų
- Maltese - tadam
- Norwegian - tomat
- Polish - pomidor
- Portuguese - tomate
- Romanian - roşii
- Russian - томат
- Serbian - парадајз
- Slovak - paradajka
- Slovenian - paradižnika
- Spanish - tomate
- Swedish - tomat
- Thai - โทมาโท
- Turkish - domates
- Ukrainian - томат
- Vietnamese - cà chua
May 15th, 2009 at 7:36 am
Thanks, Vanessa! What a delightful post!
May 15th, 2009 at 11:04 am
It’s interesting how similar some of them are to the English word. But, is it to-may-to or to-mah-to?
May 27th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
hey - I just noticed you have a “tomato wiki” - my site is also a wiki for gardeners. I hope you check it out and like it… if so I’d love a link to my site, or at least the tomato article
May 27th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
by the way, Tomato in Armenian is լոլիկ (lolig or lolik)