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How to say Bon Appétit in 23 other Languages

Food for thought:

Probably all languages have formulaic utterances which are said on certain occasions, e.g. French 'bon appétit!' – "good appetite" said to guests at the dinner table, or French 'bon voyage' – "good trip", said to travellers. The fact that some of these have been borrowed into English from other languages, like French, is indicative of the fact that English does not have ready-made concise equivalent formulas for these occasions.

Commonly used substitutes in English are: 'Enjoy your Meal!' or perhaps the host saying: 'Do start' or 'Don't wait'. 

Here are some some equivalents in other Languages:

Catalan	Bon profit!
Croatian	Dobar tek!
Danish	Velbekomme!
Dutch	Smakelijk eten!
French	Bon appétit!
German	Guten appetit!
Hebrew (transliterated)	Bete'avon!
Hungarian	Jó étvágyat!
Italian	Buon appetito!
Japanese (transliterated)	Itadakimas!
Korean (transliterated)	Mani deuseyo!
Lithuanian	Gero apetito!/Skanaus!
Modern Greek (transliterated)	Kale orexe!
Norwegian	Vćr sĺ god!
Persian	Noosh-e jan!
Polish	Smacznego!
Portuguese	Bom apetite!
Russian (transliterated)	Priiatnogo appetita!
Serbian (transliterated)	Prijatno!
Spanish	ˇBuen provecho!
Swedish	Smaklig mĺltid!
Turkish	Afiyet olson!
Yiddish (transliterated)	Est gezunterhayt!

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As far as I know, only pigs root around in their food, but I'm game for anything. Hmmm, what's this radicchio stuff? By gosh, it comes from Latin radix and means "root." I'll give you three chances to tell me what the English word radish comes from. But your first two guesses don't count!

Among other culinary (Latin culina = "kitchen") treats in the What's for Lunch? category of 2002 Paideia words, I find some delicious delicacies to delight me (Latin delicere = "entice, lure"). I cannot decide which is more delectable (Latin delectare is a derivative of delicere and also means "entice").

For your precibal (pre- + cibus = "before" + "food") enjoyment, there's a smorgasbord. (Take a look at that etymology. It's quite a plateful: butter resembling geese . . . ?) Or you may prefer the antipasto. (Remember anti- = "against" and ante- = "before"? Well, here's the exception: anti- + pastus = "before" + "fed," so antipasto is a food that comes before you are fed the main course.)

Now that your appetite (Latin ad- + petere = "to go to, to head for") has been whetted by those appetizers, let's see what recipes we can concoct. (Recipe, from recipio = "receive, take," is a command in Latin meaning "Take!" You've heard of recipes that say "take a cup of . . ." or "take a pinch of . . . ." We get the word concoct from con- + coctus = "together" + "cooked." Latin coctus is a past participle of coquere, such as English verbs ending in -ed (e.g., cooked) are past participles.

There is so much food here, for thought and for eating, it's hard to know where to start. We can go to the New World for some succotash (from Algonquian, a North American Native language) or tamales (from Nahuatl, a Central American Native language), or we can go to Japan for some sukiyaki and some really hot wasabi. We can visit the Arabs for some spicy tarragon, an artichoke, or some sweet marzipan; or we can visit Greece for some moussaka (actually a Turkish word). How about Italy for cioppino, the United States for jimmies, Germany for streuselkuchen, the French village of Dax for dacquoise, Africa for yams, Scotland for haggis . . . . We could go on and on!

And when you are all done and stuffed with delicious food to satiety [satis = "enough," and etas is a Latin suffix used to make abstract nouns (etas and -itas become -ety and -ity in English)], you can have a postprandial (post + prandium = "after" + "luncheon") siesta as you recover from you whirlwind gastronomic tour of the world.

Courtesy: http://www.spellingbee.com/cctoc.shtml
Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee