So, what’s the Italian birthday song like? It’s very easy to learn now that you know how to say best wishes in Italian. The Italian birthday song is used as much as the English one, and on the same occasions: by phone call, to begin a surprise party, before cutting the birthday cake, etc.
(tu) auguri – “you wish” (informal singular second person).To tell the birthday person “I wish you a happy birthday”, you would say Ti auguro un buon compleanno.īut what if you wanted to say we wish you a happy birthday to several people at the same time? Or if you wanted to express someone else’s wishes? You would have to modify the phrase accordingly.įirst, let’s see how to conjugate the verb augurare, which belongs to the first group of Italian verbs. You’ve learnt that “wishes” is auguri in Italian, so it’ll be easy to remember that “to wish” is augurare. You may also simply say Auguri! (literally “wishes”) or add the suffix -oni to make the wishes bigger: Auguroni! How to Say “I Wish You a Happy Birthday” in Italian: Ti Auguro un Buon Compleanno
You can use it to express your best wishes on Christmas as well as on New Years or Women’s Day. Actually, it’s the joker card when it comes to Italian greetings. Note: As you see, tanti auguri doesn’t include the word compleanno, so it’s not only for birthdays. However, its meaning is closer to “best wishes”. What does tanti auguri mean? If we were to literally translate it to English, tanti auguri would be “many wishes”. Try out the Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter-style phrase and wish them instead un buon non compleanno (“a happy non birthday”)! How to Say “Best Wishes” in Italian: Tanti Auguriīuon compleanno is “happy birthday” in English, but Italians often use alternative phrases to greet the birthday person. What if you can’t wait to wish a happy birthday in Italian, but none of your friends or relatives are celebrating theirs? Simple! How to Wish a Happy Non-Birthday in Italian: Buon Non Compleanno! Like English, in Italian, data di nascita (“birthdate”) is made up of the words data (“date”), di (“of”), and nascita (“birth”). If you’re worried about confusing the two in Italian, rest assured that it’s nearly impossible. There’s only one date of birth for each of us while we have had as many birthdays as we are old. While the first is a recurrent yearly event, the second represents the exact date when you were born, year and all. “Birthday” and “birthdate” aren’t the same thing. How to Say “Date of Birth” in Italian: Data di Nascita Buon San Valentino – “Happy Valentine’s Day”.They say buon compleanno (literally “good birthday”).īuon/a replaces “happy” in many other special-event greetings. However, Italians don’t wish a happy birthday, but a good one. “Happy birthday” translated to Italian in a literal way would be felice compleanno, as felice means “happy” in Italian. How do you say “Happy Birthday” in Italian? How to Say “Happy Birthday” in Italian: Buon Compleanno
While in English the word explicitly describes the day of your birth, in Italian it’s the day that marks the full completion of one more year of your life. If we break compleanno down, we get comple from the Spanish verb cumplir (“to carry out”, or in this case, “to complete”) and anno from the Spanish noun año (“year”). In Italian, the word for “birthday” is also a compound word: compleanno.Ĭompleanno comes from the Spanish word cumpleaños (“birthday”).
In English, the word “birthday” is made up of the nouns “birth” and “day”. How to Say “Birthday” in Italian: Compleanno Let me help you prepare for the celebrations! Pair this with their world-famous cuisine, and you can imagine how cool it must be to attend an Italian birthday party. Italians are jovial people who love to celebrate and have a good time with their family and friends. Or it might be because you’re planning a trip to Italy, and who knows if you’ll be invited to some birthday party there? There’s no such thing as an unexpected guest in Italian homes, so you might even get a last-minute invitation. Maybe you want to say “Happy Birthday” in Italian to give a smile to your Italian partner or friends on their special day. Would you like to learn how to say “happy birthday” in Italian? Full disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.