Birthday, Weekend, Promotion, Engagement, Wedding, Children, Grades, Degrees, Week-split. There are millions of reasons to cheers with your friends, family and random strangers in a bar. Life itself deserves to be cheered every day. And that is what we do here in Taiwan. Due to our international friendship compositions, there are many ways to cheer, and some of them are shown here – and that is a rhyme.

Austria, Germany – Prost, Zum Wohl

In the German speaking locations, the most used toast is a simple Prost. The word itself origins from the Latin word prodesse, which means to be useful/salubrious. Prost is the short form of Prosit, which is is the 3^rd form singular conjunctive present tense active form of prodesse. For everyone who is not familiar with Latin grammar, it is a simple wish formula, meaning: It shall be useful. Zum Wohl is also common as a toast meaning To Wellbeing.

France – Santé

Some cheer for prosperity, some cheer for friendship and some cheer for world domination. French, however, cheer for literal health. While praying to the god of alcohol to receive health with a simple Santé, you can also wish someone else’s wellbeing in using the longer A votre santé.

Guatemala, Peru – Salud

The Latin-American Spanish equivalent to the German Prost also roots back to ancient Latin. Salud origins from salus, which the pope – and everyone else who speaks or have spoken Latin – used to say Health. Wishing health is not as extraordinary, as we see the French and German versions, but the Guatemalan shaming for not drinking is special. Saying El que brinda y no toma se le cae la Paloma, meaning when you cheer but refuse to drink, your dong won’t stand but rather sink. Saying La que brinda y no chupa se le seca la cuca, meaning when you don’t drink after the cheering cry, your pussy won’t be wet but rather dry.

Taiwan – Gānbēi乾杯

In Taiwan you don’t cheer on behalf of someone or something; You cheer on behalf of drinking. Gānbēi can be translated into dry the cup, indicating that you should at least drink a bit – or better, finish the drink in one big sip. In Mandarin Chinese, another character is used for Gān. This character, however, has a more R-Rated meaning in traditional Chinese.

Estonia – Terviseks

Spoken out fast the Estonian cheering sounds a lot like “terrible sex”, and it is not as far from the real meaning as it looks like. When you separate the word into two, tervis means health, seks is sex. So when you cheer you say: tervis for you and seks for me!

Others

With so many different nationalities it is hard to cheer in every single language. Besides those five most used, here are other international cheers, you can hear in our big group:

Mongolia – Toloo

India, USA – Cheers

Poland – Zdrowie

Czech Republic – Na zdraví

Denmark – Skål

Vietnam – Vô

Philippines – Tagay

And many more….