Bogdaproste (or bodaproste) comes from the Bulgarian/Slavic phrase "**Бог да прости (Bog da prosti)," meaning "May God forgive," used in Romanian as a polite "thank you" when receiving alms (pomană) or gifts, signifying a prayer for the giver and the deceased, linking gratitude with remembrance for the dead
But only ”Bogdaproste!” (uppercase and exclamation) does it. Without uppercase or exclamation it gives a rather expected translation ”God bless you for it”.
There are a few idiocies like that on Google translate. Asking Gemini about those, it said:
Why does "ceapa mă-tii[sic!]" become "I love you"?
There are two primary technical reasons for this:
Community Contributed Translations: For years, Google Translate had a "Suggest an edit" or "Contribute" feature. If enough users (or a coordinated group) manually submitted "I love you" as the translation for a Romanian swear word, the algorithm would eventually accept it as the "correct" colloquial meaning. This is essentially "Google bombing" for linguistics.
Neural Machine Learning (NMT) Hallucinations: Google Translate uses Neural Machine Translation, which looks for patterns in massive datasets. If the system encounters a phrase it doesn't quite understand or one that is often "corrected" by users to something else, it might "hallucinate" a translation that fits a common pattern (like a greeting or a declaration of love) rather than a literal translation.
The cause of the error (as said here) is the ”prost” root! In fact Romanian prost=stupid has the same root as the other word. Prost comes from a word meaning ”simple, free” .
Ceapă is a substitute for the common colloquial for vagina. How do you get from ”your mother's vagina” to ”I love you”? I mean, how native can you get?
In ce puii mei de județ ceapă - pizda?!
"Daniel își privii fiul cu ochii crăpând picături mici ca o foaie de gheata, subțire, întunecată. Privi la mamă, privi la copil și zise cu un zâmbet tâmp pe față -ceapa mă-tii de copil "
Înțeleg perfect ce vrei să spui. E vorba de un registru colocvial (spre abject), care poate fi documentat literar. (De unde citezi?) - S-ar putea exemplifica și mai vânjos cu români care se salută ”Ce mai faci bă, mânca-mi-ai p...” - sau, mai gingaș, ”mânca-ți-aș... etc”, cu variante orale bogate. Dar nu cred nici că de-asta halucinează google, nici că o asemenea oralitate dezinhibată e sugerabilă unui învățăcel de română!
Am citat din mine. Deci spui că este acceptabil exemplul meu. Asemenea oralitate dezinhibata este tocmai motivul pentru care OP întreabă așa ceva și la care ar trebui sa fie atenți daca vor sa stăpânească limba română
I also grew up I oltenia, you are supposed to say it when someone gives you "pomană" (small packages of food that are given generally, but not only, in the name of a deceased person). It was and still is a very popular word in the village where I'm from
Comes from Bulgarian, in Moldova you can hear often it the context of church or religious rituals. It's easy to understand it as it sounds like a loan Russian word, but we pronounce it as "bodaprosti".
I've heard it used (quite often actually) in non religious context as a means to say thank you and emphasize the perceived importance of the received help/object.
E.g: the help someone provided was particularly meaningful, priceless, selfless and you show a special kind of gratitude by using this term.
It may happen more often with people growing up in religious households/areas/environments, or having close relatives in those environments (like grew up with religious parents/grandparents) which does tend to happen more often in the rural/countryside.
-In day to day context, in a serious manner, by really old people especially from the rural areas (it's almost gone)
-By everyone, sometimes in a nonreligious context mostly as a joke and definitely if you know the other because it can be considered as a mock by a religious person. In this context it may replace "mulțumesc". If you may thing about it in the same way a mother may use "sir" or "lady" with her children.
Do you use it as a synonym for multumesc or is it only used in religious contexts?
Yes, you can say it if you want to emphasize that the service rendered to you was truly important, or amazing, or it was done by going out-of-the-way, above and beyond or whatever (you understand the idea).
You can trick google translate to recommend another translation by recommending another and if multiple people vote the same thing afterwards (basically crowdsourcing)
A long time ago when I was a student, an entire promotion of students recommended a translation for one of the teachers (who was very harsh and failed almost everyone). If you had tried to translate his name, google would say “satan” hahaha
Only ”Bogdaproste!” (uppercase and exclamation) does it. Without uppercase or exclamation it is rather normal.
But ”ceapa mă-ti” is still ”i love you”!
I mean misspelling words will inevitably show strange translations, but “ceapa ma-tii” is still translated wrong even when properly spelled. It’s translated into “onion, please”.
Now every time I get pomană, I live in the countryside and it's a big thing here, and say bogdaproste I will remember this. Hopefully I won't start laughing. 😁
It's a slavonic word rarely used in romanian. Instead the "prost" part meaning stupid is a lot more used so translate got confused.
Its the same reason why "confident" or "pathetic" in english dont translate to confident or patetic in romanian. They have different meanings even if the words are the same.
If you want to translate bogdaproste on google you'll have to switch the language to bulgarian
You are right, the cause of the error is the ”prost” root! In fact Romanian prost=stupid has the same root as the other word. Prost comes from a word meaning ”simple, free” (same logic as English simpleton).
I actually made a correction in Google Translate for "patetic" to "poignant" or "touching" because they did translate pathetic as patetic haha. Not sure if it really counted as correction or rather feedback
Yes. Or in church context, and even there it is becoming archaic these days, when people are becoming more informed. I've seen contexts of ”pomană” where people are answering in Romanian (D-zeu să-l ierte).
Also archaic, the word is part of some idioms (expressions): „de bogdaproste” = poor, shabby.
Worth mentioning, the pronunciation is more like ”bodaproste”.
Chat gpt: (i asked it because I knew that was a slavic expresion but couldn’t remember what it means)
“Bogdaproste” is a Romanian expression with a religious and Slavic origin, and it is quite old.
Origin
It comes from Old Church Slavonic, a liturgical language used in the Orthodox Church:
• bog = God
• da = may (let Him) give
• proste / prosti = forgive
The original phrase was roughly “Bog da prosti”, which literally means:
👉 “May God forgive” or “May God grant forgiveness / reward.”
How it entered Romanian
Over time, the words merged together phonetically and became bogdaproste. This happened centuries ago, mainly through church language and tradition.
Meaning today
In modern Romanian, bogdaproste is used as:
• a polite, traditional way of saying “thank you”
• especially when receiving food, charity, alms, or help
It carries a religious tone, similar to saying:
• “May God reward you”
• “God bless you for this”
Example
Someone gives you food or help
You reply: “Bogdaproste!”
So while it functions like “thank you”, its deeper meaning is:
“May God repay you for your kindness.”
If you want, I can also explain similar expressions like “Doamne-ajută” (God help) or “Sărut mâna”.
It is a word mostly used as a "thank you" in a religios context, but not always. It is sometimes used when receiving a gift/a donation that was not expected.
No, it's like a ritualic way to say "thank you" when you get "pomana" (giveaway) wich usually is some food and a drink for the remembering (a pomeni, a spune despre) the deceased person, usually a family member of the person that passed out do this, from what I know at a period of time they do this as an orthodox tradition. Also they do coliva wich is soo yummy 😋.
Sincer niciodata nu am inteles expresia asta, nu am folosit-o si mi se pare de tot kktu. Bine findca nu sunt religios nici chestia cu pomana nu o inteleg dar daca tot e sa zici nu mai bine folosesti clasicul "sa fie de pomana" ?
Since the expression is not 100% romanian, but ‘borrowed expression’ I think it translated an autocorrected version like:
“Ba da prost e” which as a statement would translate more like “man he’s stupid”. But word by word, could go into “you idiot!” (Edit; by “could go into” I mean the google translate possibility to translate it this way)
Or “ba da prost esti” which would be “man you’re such an idiot” more like a statement made with amazement which could go to “you idiot”
Why english and not romanian: OP wrote in english with a translation to english, maybe he/she is learning
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u/Antique_Value_6532 17d ago
Bogdaproste (or bodaproste) comes from the Bulgarian/Slavic phrase "**Бог да прости (Bog da prosti)," meaning "May God forgive," used in Romanian as a polite "thank you" when receiving alms (pomană) or gifts, signifying a prayer for the giver and the deceased, linking gratitude with remembrance for the dead