Bob Schwartz

In honor of the United Nations and the meeting of its General Assembly, following are different ways of saying “idiot” in many world languages. (Note: It is surprising how many languages use the word “idiot” unchanged. It appears to be a globally recognized phenomenon.)

Albanian idiot

Basque idiota

Belarusian ідыёт

Bosnian idiot

Bulgarian идиот

Catalan idiota

Croatian idiot

Czech idiot

Danish idiot

Dutch idioot

Estonian idioot

Finnish idiootti

French idiot

Galician idiota

German Dummkopf

Greek βλάκας (vlákas)

Hungarian idióta

Icelandic Hálfviti

Irish leathcheann

Italian idiota

Latvian idiots

Lithuanian idiotas

Macedonian идиот

Maltese idjota

Norwegian idiot

Polish idiota

Portuguese idiota

Romanian idiot

Russian идиот (idiot)

Serbian идиотски (idiotski)

Slovak idiot

Slovenian idiot

Spanish idiota

Swedish idiot

Ukrainian ідіот

Welsh idiot

Yiddish ידיאָט

Armenian ապուշ

Azerbaijani idiot

Bengali নির্বোধ

Chinese Simplified 白痴

Chinese Traditional 白痴

Georgian idiot

Gujarati ઈડિયટ્સ

Hindi बेवकूफ

Hmong ruam

Japanese 馬鹿

Kannada ಈಡಿಯಟ್

Kazakh есуас

Khmer របុសផ្លើ

Korean 백치

Lao idiot

Malayalam വിഢ്ഢി

Marathi मूर्ख

Mongolian эргүү тэнэг

Myanmar (Burmese) လူထုံ

Nepali मुर्ख

Sinhala මෝඩයෙක්

Tajik нощисулащл

Tamil முட்டாள்

Telugu ఇడియట్

Thai คนบ้า

Urdu مورھ

Uzbek tentak

Vietnamese kẻ ngốc

Arabic الأبله (al’abalah)

Hebrew אִידיוֹט

Persian ادم سفیه و احمق

Turkish salak

Afrikaans idioot

Chichewa chitsiru

Hausa wawa

Igbo onye iberibe

Sesotho sephoqo

Somali doqon

Swahili idiot

Yoruba ode

Zulu silima

Cebuano buangbuang

Filipino tanga

Indonesian Idiot

Javanese bodho

Malagasy adala

Malay bodoh

Maori pōrangi

Esperanto idioto

Haitian Creole moun sòt

Latin stultus