Some countries, which were lazier than others, merely reused expressions already in vogue. In Swahili, Afya! (to health) is used while drinking and also when someone sneezes and so it is for the term na zdrowie, which is used across many parts of Central Europe.

Do remember, however, that if you’re in a foreign country, always try and stay true to the

"Irish toast stands out from all: “May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and a smooth road all the way to your door"

country’s traditions by using its local toast and not using a generic expression, say like the British chin-chin, especially not in Japan, where chin-chin sounds remarkably like a word describing male genitalia. Also verify that what you’ve been told is actually the correct word and not someone stringing you along.

The Japanese used to use the word Banzai a lot. Funnily, Banzai means to life and that was what Japanese soldiers and Kamikaze pilots used to say while charging into battle. Needless to say, that’s one expression, that didn’t survive World War, with Kanpai, another expression popular in Japan, taking over. What’s Kanpai in Japanese is Ganbei in Chinese, with both expressions meaning roughly the same thing and that is to empty one’s cup or bottoms up!

A friend of mine who, on joining McKinsey in 1992, went on consulting boot camp to Scandinavia. Like in all good boot camps, getting smashed was a part of the curricula and participants gathered from around the world were asked to call out their native drinking expression, as they drained their glasses. The closest my friend could come was chadao! When we began Tulleeho in 1999, we realised that there was no Indian expression for cheers, so we took the high ground and began to try and popularise our company’s name, Tulleeho—a combination of the old hunting cry tally ho! and the colloquial Hindi word tullee (used both as a verb and noun and signfying a state of inebriation), as a pan-Indian expression, which seemed a low-cost way to build the brand also.

Happy hours:  Germans prefer prost

But trust the Germanic people to find a practical way to say cheers! They say Prost when they are drinking together. The word is believed to originate from the Latin, prosit, which means something like “it shall be useful.” In Russia, they say za zdaraovje, with three toasts being raised, the first in honour of the occasion, the second, to friendship, za druzhbu and the third, my favourite, is to love, (za l’ubof). If I were to make a list of my favourites, then close to the top of the list would be the Hebrew, L’chaim (to life). If you are in South America, then salud is safe and in Scandinavia, skoal or skol is the way to go. In Gaelic, Slainte Mhath means “good health”—slainte translates vaguely as health. Irish, Gaelic (Scottish), and Welsh are all related languages. It’s pronounced as Slanzh’va and is best uttered while draining a dram of the Isle of Jura Single Malt on a windy pier, next to their distillery on the Isle of Jura. If you are looking for a universal toast, then look no further than Je via Sano! (To your health, in Esperanto, the International language developed by Dr Ludovic Zamenhof).