When Henry James wrote the lines, "Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language," he was definitely onto something. But the beauty of "summer afternoon" -- and "summer" in general for that matter -- goes far beyond the English language. The magic of this season knows no bounds. And no matter what your mother tongue is, "summer" is wondrous in every language.
SUMMER
A toddler swims through a hoop underwater during a swimming class in Sydney, Australia. (Ian Waldie/Getty Images)
VERÃO
A 4-year-old girl and her mother swim in the Negro river in Manaus, the capital city of the state of Amazonas in northern Brazil. (Yasuyoshi Chiba/Getty Images)
Escaping the summer heat by playing in a fountain in Shanghai, China. (STR/AFT/Getty Images)
MUSIM PANAS
An Indonesian grandmother gives her grandkids a swimming lesson in the ocean. (Getty)
Pakistani children swim in a stream to cool off as the temperature rises on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
YAZ
A boy does a backflip into the Bosphorus river in Istanbul, Turkey. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)
An Afghan boy jumps into a river in Surabhi, some 100 kilometers from Kabul, Afghanistan. (AP)
A young boy gets ready to jump into the pool in Baghdad, Iraq. (Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images)
ÉTÉ
A child slides down a water slide at a public swimming pool in Geneva, Switzerland. (KEYSTONE/Martial Trezzini/AP)
VERË
Albanian refugee children from Kosovo cool down in the mid-day heat. (AP Photo/Enric Marti)
DER SOMMER
Children play in the Ruhr river in Essen, Germany. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)
MAIN-TANY
Children playing on the shores of Madagascar. (500PX)
EL VERANO
Children play in an irrigation canal, the local swimming hole that runs though Aracataca, Colombia. (AP Photo/Ricardo Mazalan)
LJETO
Three Croatian girls enjoy the blue waters of the sea. (WestEnd61/Getty)
ЛЕТО
Belarussian girls wearing homemade grass-skirts dance in a river while celebrating Ivan Kupala Night, a traditional Slavic holiday. (Viktor Drachev/AFP/GettyImages)