Language is all around us. From birth, we are taught to speak the language of those around us in order to communicate. Some of us might learn another language, or several, later on in life. We spend our lives using languages day after day, but there are so many things about them that we do not know. While there are hundreds of facts about languages, some jump out as particularly interesting or very unique.
SINCE LANGUAGE IS OUR BUSINESS AND OUR PASSION AT E-ging, WE WANTED TO SHARE SOME OF THESE LANGUAGE FACTS WITH YOU.
25. Khmer, the official language of Cambodia, has the largest alphabet with 74 letters.
24. The most translated document is Universal Declaration of Human Rights, written by the United Nations. It has been translated into 321 languages and dialects.
23. In the United States, there is now almost 7 times the number of Vietnamese speakers there were in 1980.
22. Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken dialects of Chinese. Traditional and Simplified are written forms of the language.
21. South Africa used to have 2 official languages: English and Afrikaans. Now, there are 11: Afrikaans, English, Ndebele, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Swazi, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu.
20. The name of the Irish language is actually “Irish.” Gaeilge (Gaelic) refers to the name of the language in Irish. Irish is the name in English.
19. The Constitution of Bolivia recognizes 37 official languages, aside from Spanish, including the languages of Bolivia’s native indigenous nations. This is the most of any country.
18. The literal translation of the German word Kummerspeck into English is “grief bacon.” However, the meaning is the excess weight gained due to emotional overeating.
17. In Japanese, Tsundoku describes “the act of buying books and not reading them, leaving them to pile up.”
16. There are 381 languages spoken in the United States; about 169 are Native American languages
15. Persian is also the same as Farsi. There are so many former Iranian nationals and their descendants living in Los Angeles that it is sometimes nicknamed “Tehrangeles.”
14. In Vatican City, the directions for ATM use are in Latin: “Inserito scidulam quaeso ut faciundam cognoscas rationem.”
13. There is a single word in Russia, Zapoi (Запой) to describe a drunken bender.
12. Swedish was not the official language of Sweden until 2009. The usage of English became so prevalent that the government wanted to strengthen the status of Swedish!
11. It took the Greeks nearly 200 years to decide which official language – Demotic Greek or Ancient Greek (katharevousa) – to use. Demotic Greek won.
10. The popular phrase “Hakuna matata” (meaning “No worries”) from The Lion King is from Swahili.
9. Papua New Guinea has no less than 832 different languages!
8. The number 5 is pronounced “ha” in Thai, so 5555 is Internet slang for LOL.
7. In Indonesian, “Jayus” is a slang word for someone who tells a joke that is so bad, that you laugh because it is so unfunny. Such a word does not exist in English.
6. The word for turkey in Turkey is Hindi, which is an official language in India.
5. David Peterson, inventor of Dothraki and Valyrian for HBO’s Game of Thrones, is known as a professional ‘conlanger’- someone who has been hired to create languages.
4. There are 6 official languages of the United Nations.
3. Pope Francis tweets in 9 different languages.
2. There is no official language of the United States.
1. There are about 7,000 languages in the world.
