How to Say 'Google' in Every Language (Almost)
Since Google the verb—as in "to Google" something—officially entered the American lexicon in 2006 (Merriam Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary), other languages have followed suit, co-opting the active version of the word. And, come on, of course they have. How else could non-English speaking people tell their non-English speaking friends to "just Google it"? Or that they are "Googling all wrong"? Which is how we discovered this fascinating phenomenon, actually: The other week my post "You Google Wrong" elicited some foreign language tweets, bringing to our attention that "to Google" has now been translated into many other languages, and as a verb. Of course non-English speakers can always take the longer route and say "search on Google"; others will go for an accented version of the English "Google it" — or so I'm told by people I contacted since the original post, people fluent in the modern tech-speak of many tongues. These people say the verb is out there, in at least 18 languages that I could track down.
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We've compiled an incomplete list of ways to pronounce "to Google" in those languages, which we also tracked down with the help of Quora, a Lonely Planet thread. Click "start Prezi" on our little graphic below, which we built with the presentation software Prezi, then click the arrows on the bottom to travel around the world.
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An Incomplete Pronunciation of "To Google" in 18 Languages:
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English — google
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Spanish — googlear and guglear
Italian — googlare
Portuguese — googlar or guglar
German — googeln and googlen
French — googler
Swedish — att googla
Hebrew — l'gagel
Slovenian — proguglati or poguglati
Croatian — guglati or proguglati
Polish — googlować
Russian — гуглить (gugleet or googleet)
Japanese — ググる (guguru)
Fillipino — eēgoogle mò (i-google mo)
Finnish — googlata
Dutch — googlen
Czech — vygooglit
Korean — google ha da
If you speak a foreign language and can add to our list, please leave a note in the comments or send an email and we'll update the post — and our neat little animation, too.
