Turkey Day is just around the corner and it is that time of the year where we take a mini breather and give thanks.   So, why not start saying thank you in different languages? Read our Bilingual Thanksgiving – Thank you letter from a bilingual child for some feel good bilingual parenting moment.

How to say Thank You in different languages

Spanish: Gracias

French: Merci

German: Danke

Portuguese: Obrigado/a

Russian: Спасибо (spasiba)

Chinese: 谢谢 (xie xie in simplified Chinese)  謝謝 xie xie in traditional Chinese

Cantonese: 多謝 (doh zhe, for a gift) 唔該 (m goi, for a service)

Italian: grazie

Dutch: bedankt

Swedish: tack

Zulu: Ngiyabonga

Hindi: धन्यवाद  (dhanyavaad)

Catalán:  Gràcies

Quechua: sulpayki

We have rounded up our favorite bilingual activities around Turkey Day in order to say thank you in different languages.

Bilingual Turkey Cards – Say Thank you in different languages

A great idea to show your thankfulness is to send handmade Thank You cards for all the important people in your child’s life. You can even ask him/her to write Thank you in different languages. Here some card ideas:

Momtrusted’s Handmade Thanksgiving Cards

The Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking’s  Simple Thanksgiving Cards with Kids

Bilingual Thanksgiving Books we love

We are biased, but we love books and they are great resources to practice your home language. We have found a lot of Thanksgiving related Spanish/English books, but please give us some hints for books in other languages.

Pat Mora’s Gracias – Thanks

A bicultural child and the importance of giving thanks for the little things.

El pavo que se olvidó como hacer glu-glu – The Turkey that forgot how to gobble by Alexis Purcell

A story that will have your little ones laughing and asking for more.

Un regalo de gracias – a Gift of Gracias by Julia Alvarez

A story of perseverance and thankfulness for 3-7 year olds.

Gracias El pavo de Thanksgiving – Gracias the Thanksgiving Turkey by Joy Cowley

My kids loved this book, even though they had no idea what Thanksgiving was all about.

Where is my Turkey by Sujatha Lalgudi

A toddler, his pet Turkey and their first Thanksgiving. It is a bilingual book in English and any of the following languages Spanish, Italian, German, Romanian, Ukranian, Dutch, Chinese, Finnish, Bulgarian, Russian

Games for Bilingual Thanksgiving Day

We love treasure hunts and it is the perfect time to give the kids a bit more language exposure.  They learn more when they think is just a game and they are having fun. You can even have them say thank you in different languages as one of the tasks.

Here some ideas by The Dating Divas that you can adapt to your home language.

Make a Bilingual Thankfulness List

Bilingual Kids often mix their languages, so it would be interesting to see if they use different languages to say thank you for the things that matter to them.

Here is a beautiful Thankfulness printable from our Underwater Adventure.

Happy Bilingual Turkey Day!!