June is always a busy month for me as many of my good friends. So what do you say (or write, if you prefer sending a card or an email)? The easiest and most common phrase is

Wszystkiego najlepszego

which literally means “All the best” and is pretty generic. You can modify the phrase depending on the occasion. So for birthdays you can say:

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji urodzin

“All the best on your birthday”.

If someone is getting married, you can say:

Wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji ślubu

“All the best on your marriage”. But let’s go back to celebrating birthdays. Two words you might find useful are:

Życzenia “wishes” and Życzyć, which means ‘to wish”, but you will usually use: Życzę (Ci)…szczęścia i dużo miłości

which means “I wish (you) happiness and lots of love…”.

There’s also an easy option. There’s a song we sing to celebrate someone’s birthday in which we express our wish for them to live a hundred years. The song can be used for ll different ocassions: namedays, birthdays, weddings!  A hundred years is Sto lat in Polish. If everything else fails, wish the birthday girl or boy “sto lat”. It’ll make them smile and you won’t have to struggle with all those consonants.

Do następnego razu… (Till next time…)