Happy Birthday To Me: Here's Looking Up Your Old Address and Other Toasts!

We don't give many toasts or cheers around here.  If it's a special occasion like a birthday dinner we might, which incidentally it is my birthday.  And I have a cast on my foot, and a blasted head cold, so my guess is my birthday dinner will be take out from my favorite Mexican restaurant.  And you know what?  I'm making my husband toast me.  Even if it's Diet Coke in a plastic cup from the football game.   Sometimes when we're silly one of us will say, "Here's looking up your old address," which is what Colonel Henry Blake used to say on M*A*S*H.  I'm not sure I've ever stood up and formally given a toast.  Well nothing that didn't start out, "Here's to you and here's to me..."  Every once in awhile on television or in a movie I will here someone say something that I am assuming to be the equivalent of, "CHEERS" but in another language.  It got me thinking, every day should be a celebration, every meal should be a celebration.  The time we spend together at the table should be a celebration.  Who cares if you're eating a Stouffer's Lasagna and drinking Hawaiian Punch?  Make a toast anyway.  And now, you'll now how to make it in Italian.  Enjoying my Taco Soup recipe?  Say, "Cheers" in Spanish!

Our "Bar" It's really an antique sideboard with an interesting history.  From the looks of it you think we said "CHEERS!" constantly, but I'm really more of a Diet Coke girl at heart.

CHEERS AROUND THE WORLD:

Afrikaans     Gesondheid!
Albanina     Gezuar!
Amharic     Desta!
Catalan     Salut!
Chinese     Ganbei!
Danish     Skal!
Dutch     Proost!
Finnish     Kippis!
French     A votre sante!
Gaelic (Irish)     Slainte! Just in time for St. Patrick's Day...
German     Prost!
Greek     Ebiba!
Hebrew     L'chaim!
Italian     Salute!
Japanese     Kampai!
Morse Code     _._  ....  .  .  ._.  ...
Norwegian     Skal!
Pig Latin     Eerschay!
Polish     Na zdrowie!
Portuguese     Saude!
Romanian     Noroc!  You know, for when you're in Transylvania...
Russian     Na zdorovye!
Serbo-Croation     Ziveldi!
Spanish     Salud!
Swahili     Hongera!
Taiwanese     Hotala!

My husband's grandmother's collection of Swanky Swizzle Sticks...

Most of these toasts are simply intend to wish each other well.  Some translate "To Life" or "To Your Health".  Some are simply, "Drink Up" or "Bottoms Up" 

If you want to go and get fancy, here are a few others with slightly different meanings:

Chinese     Yu sing  ("drink and win")
Danish     Bunden i vejret eller resten i haret ("Bottoms up or the rest in your hair")
English     Here's Mud In Your Eye
Greenlandic     Kassutta ("Let our glasses meet")

And here's one to all of you from The Devilish Dish:

"May you be in Heaven fifteen minutes before the Devil knows you are dead."