Birthday wishes in English and other languages

You can use English birthday wishes for practically any international friend. Everyone probably knows Happy Birthday. However, there are many other ways to send birthday wishes in English to your friends in person or via WhatsApp. You can keep your English birthday wishes short or even write a long birthday card in English.

Below are some suggestions to help you give your English friends a happy birthday. You can use the short birthday wishes in English if you send English birthday wishes via Whatsapp or social media. The longer birthday wishes are more suitable for birthday cards or letters.

The most widely spoken languages in the world (according to a 2022 study by Ethnologue) include some European languages such as English and Spanish, but also many Asian languages. Mandarin Chinese, for example, is spoken by more than a billion people, Hindi by more than 600 million. How do you say "Happy Birthday" in these two languages? In Chinese you say "shēngrì kuàilè" (spelled 生日快乐) and in Hindi "janmadin kee shubhakaamanaen" (spelled जन्मदिन की शुभकामनाएं). One of the most widely spoken languages is Arabic, with over 270 million speakers, where you can say "eid melad sa'eed" (or عيد ميلاد سعيد) to wish someone a happy birthday.

Among the languages whose writing system differs from the one we are familiar with, Japanese (お誕生日おめでとう, which is pronounced "otanjoubi omedetou") and Korean (생일 축하 해요, which is pronounced "saeng-il chugha haeyo") stand out alongside Chinese. In the region of Bengal, there is also Bengali in which one can write শুভ জন্মদিন and say "Śubha janmadina". In Pakistan and India, people also speak Urdu (सालगिरह् मबारक), and in the Maldives they use Dhivehi (އުފާވެރި އުފަންދުވަހެއް). If you want to wish a Thai person a happy birthday, you should say in Thai สุขสันต์วันเกิด, which is pronounced "S̄uk̄hs̄ạnt̒ wạn keid".