How to Say 'Google' in Every Language (Almost)

As a fascinating phenomenon of modern tech-speak emerges — the verb "to Google" has now been translated into many other languages — we've compiled a handy traveler's guide.

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.

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.

An Incomplete Pronunciation of "To Google" in 29 Languages:

English — google

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 (i-google)

Finnish — googlata

Dutch — googlen

Czech — vygooglit

Korean — google ha da

Romanian — a googăli

Chinese — 谷歌 (guge or gǔgē)

Greek —  γκουγκλάρω (googlaro)

Icelandic — að gúgla (ao googlah)

Turkish — googlemek

Pashto — ګوګلول  (goo gul a wul)

Norwegian — Å google

Lithuania — gūglinti

Danish — at google

Ukrainian — гуглити (googlyty)

Hungarian — googlizni (gúglizni) or googölözni (gúgölözni)

Indonesian — menggoogle

Hindi — गूगल कर (google kar)

Macedonian — гуглање

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.