The time has come to honor all of the good dads around the world. Father’s Day is this Sunday, June 17, and we’re celebrating with this video from UK tourism agency The Holiday Place. The site surveyed people from around the world and put together a compilation of people from many countries saying the word ‘father’ and in their native tongue, many of them standing next to their pops as they say it.
Photo: The Holidat Place
Learn How to Say “Father” in 113 Languages From Around the World for Father’s Day
We’ve got a challenge for any of you whose dad is either a lingophile or a fan of unusual surprises. This year, try switching up your phone call or better yet, in-person greeting. Instead of the usual “Happy Father’s Day,” you could try to say it in Portuguese, “Feliz dia dos pais,” or even German — “Alles gute zum Vatertag.” If you want to take it a step further, write the entire card in a foreign language. Perhaps you can even lure your siblings into the game and greet your dad in multiple languages.
The site also compiled 113 different variations of the word ‘father’ into a world map of dads, which yields a few interesting surprises. The most notable is that ‘padre’ is the word for father in both Spanish and Italian, and Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish also share a fatherly term. For those with a keen eye, the map also reveals that Luke Skywalker might have known who his father was much earlier on if only he spoke Dutch.
And last but not least, a big ‘šťastný den otců’ to all of the dads reading this — bonus points if you can identify where you’d have to go to hear that phrase. Hint: the country’s capital city is home to the famous John Lennon Wall. 