Cheers!, livre audio

Milk Street Radio interview

Salut! Prost! Skål! Na zdrave! Tagay!

No matter what country you clink glasses in, everyone has a word for cheers. In Cheers! Around the World in 80 Toasts, Brandon Cook takes readers on a whirlwind trip through languages from Estonian to Elvish and everywhere in between. Need to know how to toast in Tagalog? Say "bottoms up" in Basque? "Down the hatch" in Hungarian? Cook teaches readers how to toast in 80 languages and includes drinking traditions, historical facts, and strange linguistic phenomena for each. Sweden, for instance, has a drinking song that taunts an uppity garden gnome, while Turkey brandishes words like Avrupalılaştıramadıklarımızdanmışsınızcasına. And the most valuable liquor brand in the world isn't Johnny Walker or Hennessey, but Maotai—President Nixon's liquor of choice when he visited China. 

Whether you're traveling the globe or the beer aisle, Cheers! will show you there's a world of fun waiting for you. So raise a glass and begin exploring!

The audio book is narrated by Nicholas Smith. Produced by Speechki in 2021.

Croatian
"Živjeli" or "U Zdravlje"
(zheev ye lee), (oo zdrav'lee)
("Cheers," "To Health")

A golden rule of Balkan toasts: if you've heard one "Zhiveli" you've heard them all. Croatians express their version of the staple Balkan toast with a different vowel on the middle syllable—zhivyeli, rather than zhiveeli. Croatians will also say "U zdravlje," as well as "Živjeli," but that's about it. But what could possibly account for this astonishing coincidence in Živjelis? Once upon a time in the early nineteenth century, a Serbian folklorist named Vuk Karadžić got the idea to simplify his native Serbian by introducing a simplified Cyrillic alphabet. Simplification in the name of standardization was a theme later taken up by the Croatian poet Ljudevit Gaj, who urged his countrymen to adopt as a literary standard a dialect spoken throughout the Balkans called Shtokavian ("Shto," meaning "what," the dialect literally translates into something like "what-ese"). The suggestion was debated, bandied about, tossed around, laid aside, taken back up, and finally, by the end of the 19th century, accepted as a pretty good idea. The result was later called Serbo-Croatian or Croato-Serbian—a rather testy balance, like Lennon-McCartney. Later, this stylistic cobbling encompassed even more languages and became the eloquently termed Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, or BCMS. By 2009, the former Yugoslavia was a puzzle-board of new and semi-newly independent countries and a national language was a patriotic hammer in the toolbox of independence. BCMS lost its hyphens as Bosnians claimed a Bosnian language, Serbians Serbian, Croatians Croatian, and Montenegrins Montenegrin. The separation is mostly political but there is a difference in the alphabet. Serbians use the Cyrillic and Latin, Bosnian Latin, Montenegrin nominally both, but leans towards Latin, and Croatian is strictly Latin. This might not seem like much of a difference, but take a moment to reflect on how the extra "L" in "traveller" or the "S" in "organise" immediately distinguishes a Brit from an American. Now as for drinks, the go-to liquor of Eastern Europe is rakia/rakija in all its forms (cherry, pear, plum, walnut, etc.). Too many shots and even the most resilient drinker may have trouble getting out of bed in the morning but if you're lucky, before bed your Croatian comrades will prescribe you a good dose of sage tea—Croatia's hangover remedy. In addition to some of the bluest beaches on the planet, Croatia has also got a flourishing wine market. While in Croatia, take some time to sample the dark red Plavac Mali (considered a relative of Zinfandel), white Pošip, or the dessert wine Prošek (no relation to Prosecco). If you're eating out, ask for a recommendation and you'll get something new every night. And while you're at it, why not supplement your language learning with the Serbo-Croatian/or BCMS, or just plain Croatian version of 'Bon Appetit: "Dobar tek."

Tasting Note: Rakia, Šljivovica fruit brandy, Karlovačko, Ozujsko, and Pan beers

Norwegian
"Skål"
(skol)
("Toast")

Norwegian loan words are easily spotted in English. Fjord and floe take little linguistic training to recognize. There's a kind of curveball with the word ski, but slalom (not-too-fast downhill skiing) and klister (ski wax) are decidedly foreign, as is the skrei (crowd) of fish terms: brisling, krill, and lutefish. If you fall off your yngling (small boat) or wipe out trying to execute a complex Telemark (ski turn) you might say "Uff da!" and Norwegian even has its own term for a Benedict Arnold—a Quisling. This sounds a little humdrum but it ought to be mentioned that Norwegian also gave English its kraken and its narwhal, two sea-dwelling, alienesque creatures of mythological proportions. The kraken was a giant squid that dragged merchant ships to the bottom of the sea, according to Jules Verne, Herman Melville, and Captain Jack Sparrow. The narwhal is an arctic-dwelling whale masquerading as a unicorn. They're the ones responsible for all the unicorn horns you find in old museums. There's even a whole throne made of "unicorn horn" in Copenhagen. But back to the list. You might guess from it that Norwegians are a laid-back people with a fondness for skiing, sailboats, and salty fish and you'd be exactly right. Actually, according to the World Economic Forum, it's a close match between the Finns and the Norwegians deciding who are the happiest people in the world. While there are all kinds of hypotheses about what makes the world's happiest people (I imagine it has something to do with also being named one of Europe's most beautiful countries by Travel Away), there's an idea that Norway's restrictive alcohol laws might play a part. This starts with prices. A standard Norwegian beer generally costs between six and ten bucks. Young Norwegians usually avoid getting drunk at bars but when they go to supermarkets, they have to buy their beer before 8 pm. Wine Monopoly (Vinmonopolet)—the only outlet where you can buy stuff over 4.75 percent—closes even earlier, at 6 PM. That sounds awfully restrictive. Hell, it is restrictive, but Norwegians seem to like it this way: 80% of people voted to keep their Vinmonopolet, according to a 2016 survey. Does less opportunity equal less drinking? Logically yes, but drinking is still done with gusto, albeit more often at house parties and home settings. All the usual spirits are brought out for casual consumption, but for special toasts and holidays you may be introduced to Akevitt (from aqua vitae), a grain spirit flavored with anise, cumin, cardamom, caraway, fennel, or orange, and sipped, not chugged. For a quiet toast there's cheers with the simple skål but before you take shots, don't be freaked out if the Norwegians break out into song. Actually, feel free to join in: the most popular is "Ol, øl og mere øl" and the only thing you need to know before belting it out is that øl is "beer" and og mere, "one more." Happy countries, simple pleasures.

Tasting Note: Pils, Export beers, Akevitt/aquavit schnapps

Foreword
AcknowledgmentsPart I: Europe and Eastern Europe
1. Albanian
2. Basque (Euskara)
3. Breton
4. Bulgarian
5. Croatian
6. Czech
7. Dutch
8. English
9. Estonian
10. Finnish
11. French
12. Galician
13. German
14. Greek
15. Hungarian
16. Irish
17. Italian
18. Latvian
19. Lithuanian
20. Maltese
21. Norwegian
22. Polish
23. Portuguese
24. Romanian
25. Russian
26. Serbian
27. Slovak
28. Slovenian
29. Spanish
30. Swedish
31. Turkish
32. Ukrainian
33. WelshPart II: Eurasia
34. Armenian
35. Azerbaijani
36. Belarusian
37. Georgian
38. Kazakh
39. Mongolian
40. Tajik
41. UzbekPart III: Asia and Austronesia
42. Myanmar (Burmese)
43. Cebuano
44. Mandarin Chinese
45. Chinese Dialects
46. Hawaiian
47. Hindi
48. Indonesian
49. Japanese
50. Khmer
51. Korean
52. Malayalam
53. Malay
54. Nepali
55. Sinhala
56. Tagalog
57. Tamil
58. Thai
59. VietnamesePart IV: Africa and the Middle East
60. Afrikaans
61. Amharic
62. Arabic
63. Hausa
64. Igbo
65. Kinyarwanda
66. Persian (Farsi)
67. Somali
68. Swahili
69. Wolof
70. Xhosa
71. YorubaPart V: Ancient, Constructed, and Miscellaneous
72. American Sign Language
73. Ancient Greek
74. Aramaic (Syriac)
75. Esperanto
76. Hebrew
77. Latin
78. Na'vi
79. Quenya (Elvish)
80. Toki Pona
Language List by Country
Bibliography