Fun language facts

Posted on Posted in Translation

It’s been a while since our last article. Let’s have something light-hearted today. What about interesting language facts? We found so many of them on the Internet. We present our top favourites and there are 37 of them. Enjoy!

  1. The first word spoken on the moon was “okay.”
  2. Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means “the capital” in the Korean language.
  3. The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is “superior temporal sulcus”.
  4. Involuntary bad language, a symptom affecting about one in 10 people with Tourette’s syndrome, is called “coprolalia”.
  5. The word “time” is the most common noun in the English language.
  6. Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobiacs is the term for people who fear the number 666.
  7. The word “lethologica” describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
  8. In English, “four” is the only digit that has the same number of letters as its value
  9. TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters only one row of the keyboard
  10. “Speak of the Devil” is short for “Speak of the Devil and he shall come”.
  11.  The sentence “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” uses every letter in the English language
  12. The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
  13. Canada is an Indian word meaning “Big Village”
  14. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand
  15. The most common name in the world is Mohammed
  16. The longest non-medical word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION, which means “the act of estimating as worthless”.
  17. Mafia in Old Arabic means ‘sanctuary.’
  18. Karaoke means ’empty orchestra’ in Japanese.
  19. The first message tapped by Samuel Morse over his invention the telegraph was: “What hath God wrought?”
  20. The first words spoken by over Alexander Bell over the telephone were: “Watson, please come here. I want you.”
  21. The first words spoken by Thomas Edison over the phonograph were: “Mary had a little lamb.”
  22. The three words in the English language with the letters “uu” are: vacuum, residuum and continuum.
  23. A baby in Florida was named: Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboomermanifestdestiny. His middle name is George James
  24. ‘Dreamt’ is the only English word that ends in the letters ‘mt’
  25. There are only four words in the English language which end in ‘-dous’: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous
  26. The word ‘Bye’ is used in both English and Spanish meaning the same thing
  27. Pogonophobia: The fear of beards
  28. In Chinese, the words crisis and opportunity are the same
  29. The infinity character on the keyboard is called a “lemniscate”
  30. Good bye came from God bye which came from God be with you.
  31. So-long came from the Arabic salaam and the Hebrew shalom
  32. The word “monosyllable” actually has five syllables in it
  33. There are no words in the English language that rhyme with silver and orange
  34. The letter “n” ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel.
  35. Zorro’ means ‘fox’ in Spanish
  36. You won’t find a “6” in Cameroon phone numbers–the native language has no sound for “x.”
  37. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down–hence the expression “to get fired.”