Have you ever changed the language on Facebook? Facebook has so many bad sides, but they do provide a whole lot of translations of their user interface. The first time I changed the language on Facebook was back in 2011 when one of my friends told me that there was "Pirate's English" available. Researching it today, I made the sad discovery that it doesn't exist anymore! What a shame! It used to be so cool because you could "Arrr!" a post instead of liking it and "scrawl yer thoughts" instead of writing a comment. The hilarious thing was that not only were those two features translated into Pirate's English, but also your friends didn't post "an hour ago," but "'bout one turn o' yer hourglass ago". I'd really have liked to use Facebook in Pirate's English for a bit.
The second time I changed the language on Facebook was when I prepared for my Erasmus semester in Valencia, Spain. These little inputs of language helped me a lot on my Spanish-learning journey. I kept the language set to Spanish after I left Valencia until I was given a Facebook page to manage. Facebook sent a lot of notifications regarding this page, which exceeded my Spanish skills. Reluctantly, I changed it back to German. Sometimes I would go back to Spanish, but every time I had to handle things regarding the page, I needed to have Facebook talk German to me.
When I started learning Portuguese, changing the language on Facebook was one of the first things I did. That way, all the time I was spending on Facebook wouldn't be time wasted. I also liked Portuguese Facebook pages to have my feed full of Portuguese. Later, I also changed my phone's language to Portuguese. In so doing, I realized that my Portuguese had gotten ahead of my Spanish. Now that my Facebook feed is in Portuguese for the most part, I am reading most of my news in Portuguese, sometimes also posts about Germany. I think this is cool and strange at the same time. Cool because I can understand the Portuguese news pretty well, and because it gives me insight on how other countries view Germany. Strange because I feel like I'm looking at Germany from the outside in.
Learning languages is such a fascinating hobby. There are so many things to learn, to enjoy, and to like!
To answer the title's question, here's a little table of how to like things on Facebook in different languages.
Language | How to "like" |
English | Like |
German | Gefällt mir |
Portuguese | Gosto |
Spanish | Me gusta |
Afrikaans | Hou van |
French | J'aime |
Polish | Lubię to! |
Turkish | Beğen |
Danish | Synes godt om |
Catalan | M'agrada |
Russian | Hравится |
Swedish | Gilla |
Italian | Mi piace |
Esperanto | Ŝati |
Dutch | Leuk |
I'm sure I didn't cover all the languages they have by a long shot, so feel free to tell me in the comments how to like things in your native language or in the language(s) you're learning.
Absolutely lovely and wonderful post! Your writing is exceptional, and this was such a fun topic--thank you for sharing it with us. In Japanese, I believe the button is just "いいね" which means "good, right?". In Chinese, I believe the phrase is 点赞 (dian3zan4) which literally means "dot assist".
Hi Linda! In Greek it's "Μου αρέσει" :) We have also adopted the Venetian "gustο" = taste centuries ago, making it a verb in modern Greek: γουστάρω. Like saying I like the taste of that (also metaphorically).
You're posts are always so engaging and so much fun to read. Keep up the good work and let me know if you have any questions about my corrections.
Thank you for sharing your great ideas! Living in the U.S., with all of the division, I deactivated my Facebook account last autumn. If I ever go back I may employ some of your tricks!
Wonderful! I have thought about changing my computer to learn the interfaces in other languages as well a general reading. It sounds like it has worked well for you!
@VK_Spain I have switched everything to Spanish. For the first few weeks I did so only with a few unimportant stuff like Youtube and Netflix and sure it was frustrating. But after a while, step by step I switched even my phone language while traveling (those of you who travel regularly know how dangerous this could be xD) without problems.
I find "leuk" the most interesting of all the languages I speak. Instead of saying that you like something you're basically just saying "nice".
@bengingersaurus "In Chinese, I believe the phrase is 点赞 (dian3zan4) which literally means "dot assist".“ The words 点 and 赞have many meanings in Chinese, the literal meaning here is "point praise", not "dot assist". 点 is used for clicking internet links as in 点击, 赞 is for praise or approve as in 赞赏，赞许。So 点赞 is used to like a post because you are clicking to indicate your praise.
@Catalan: Without knowing Dutch, I'd have guessed that "leuk" meant "like" because of the similar spelling. Thanks for mentioning this! @Runner5: Thanks for this explanation! I know nothing about Chinese, so that's a nice bit of information to know.
M'agrada molt aquest post :D
Nice post thanks Linda! I like your approach of just changing the language of applications or your smartphone. Im doing the same with my smartphone and it really helps a lot. Are you doing it right away when you are tackling a new language or do you wait until you reached a certain level? I noticed that when i did that right away from the beginning it would really annoy me.
@Dustin: I normally wait until my comprehension is high enough that it doesn't annoy me :D My phone is currently set to Italian, but my entire Google account, especially YouTube still is in European Portuguese and some apps remained in German (e.g. the Corona Warn App).
I la Linda també parla català?
La Linda que jo sàpiga no, però tu sembla que sí 🤯
@Linda: Ah got it! Yes that makes sense :-). Good idea to have multiple languages set up that way :D. I have everything in french right now, but at the beginning it really got me mad! Because when i needed to be quick or just wanted to look up something it took me ages.
Aquí em coneixeu com CocoPop, però el meu nom real és Ulisses Menció (Uly) 😉 Vaig néixer a Cuba, però els meus avis materns eren de San Feliu (de Guíxols!). Tots ens vam traslladar als Estats Units quan jo tenia 1 any i els meus avis sempre van viure amb nosaltres. O sigui que a casa sempre parlàvem castellà i català. Però he d'admetre que el català ja no ho domino com abans. Ja que els meus avis no hi són, no tenim amb qui parlar-ho. Encantat de conèixer-te 👍🏻🤩
😲😲😲🤯🤯🤯
M'estic intentant recuperar del xoc... m'hauré de fer una camamilla.
Suposant que no sigui una broma de mal gust el que has escrit (que m'imagino que no ho és, però ja et dic, ara mateix estic al·lucinant), m'imaginava que tenies arrels hispanes, perquè òbviament no només parles l'anglès a nivell natiu, sinó el castellà també. Però no hauria imaginat mai de la vida que (1) tens alguna connexió amb el català o Catalunya i sobretot que (2) passem mesos aquí a Journaly i no dius ni piu fins ara?! Aquesta bomba no me l'esperava! Ara només espero que no sigui broma. Absolutament increïble. (Edit: Si realment et dius així, quin nom més absolutament genial :D)
CocoPop, parles català?! 😲 Ja em va sorprendre quan vas parlar alemany. Ara tinc curiositat: quines llengües parles? I Ulisses és un nom molt adequat per un editor :D
T'asseguro que no és broma. No he dit res fins ara perquè sóc editor professional i segons el meu contracte amb l'editorial, se suposa que no "dugui a terme cap activitat editorial per a cap altra entitat." Per això he hagut de ser tan misteriós 😉 Quan vam marxar de Cuba, tenia sis mesos. Vam viure un any a Madrid i després ens vam traslladar a Florida. Així que no he estat mai a Catalunya. A part dels meus avis, mai he parlat català amb ningú ni he conegut cap altre català. És realment al·lucinant 😂
Sí, Caro. Ara pots dir-me Uly com tothom :)
Quant al meu nom, el més interessant és que la meva mare el va triar per al seu primer fill quan era petita 💝
@CocoPop: I don't speak Catalan (yet?), but it's interesting how much I can understand texts.
Yes, you'll find that Catalan falls right in between French and Spanish. It's actually quite fascinating once you get into it.