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245 facts in Language. Click any fact to see its full page.
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Nearly all European languages, and many Asian ones, derive from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European.
The word 'serendipity' was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 based on a Persian fairy tale.
Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words still used in English today, including 'bedroom,' 'lonely,' and 'generous.'
The color 'orange' was named after the fruit — before oranges arrived in Europe, the color was simply called 'yellow-red.'
The word 'music' comes from the ancient Greek 'mousike,' meaning 'art of the Muses.'
There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today, and one goes extinct roughly every two weeks.
The fear of running out of coffee has a name: cenosillicaphobia applies specifically to an empty glass, but cafephobia covers coffee avoidance.
The word 'salary' comes from the Latin 'salarium,' referring to payments made to Roman soldiers in salt.
The word 'robot' comes from the Czech word 'robota' meaning forced labor or drudgery.
The word 'disaster' comes from Greek for 'bad star' — a reflection of ancient belief in astrological influence.
Some languages have no word for 'left' or 'right' — speakers of Guugu Yimithirr in Australia use cardinal directions instead.
The word 'silly' once meant 'blessed' or 'happy' in Old English.
The word 'goodbye' is a contraction of 'God be with ye.'
The word 'nice' originally meant foolish or stupid in 13th-century English — its meaning has almost fully reversed.
The word 'trivia' comes from the Latin trivium — the three subjects taught at medieval crossroads schools.
The word 'cereal' comes from Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain and harvest.
Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words still used today including 'bedroom,' 'lonely,' and 'obscene.'
The dot over the lowercase letter 'i' is called a tittle.
There is no word in English for the back of the knee.
The English language adds about 1,000 new words every year.
The word 'muscle' comes from the Latin musculus meaning 'little mouse' — the movement of biceps resembled a mouse under skin.
Sign languages are complete, independent languages — American Sign Language and British Sign Language are mutually unintelligible.
Japanese has three separate writing systems used simultaneously — hiragana, katakana, and kanji.
About 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today — one dies roughly every two weeks.
Mandarin Chinese is the language with the most native speakers at about 920 million.
The word 'quiz' supposedly originated as a bet in Dublin in 1791 — its true origin remains unknown.
The dot over the lowercase letters 'i' and 'j' is called a tittle.
'Dreamt' is the only common English word that ends in 'mt'.
The word 'set' has the most definitions in the English language — over 430 in the Oxford English Dictionary.
The word 'silly' originally meant 'blessed' in Old English.
The exclamation point was originally called the 'note of admiration'.
The dot over the letters i and j has a name — it's called a tittle.
There's a German word 'schadenfreude' meaning pleasure derived from others' misfortune, with no English equivalent.
There are about 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today, but roughly half are endangered.
English is the official language of the sky — all pilots and air traffic controllers must speak it.
There are languages with no word for specific colors — some languages group blue and green as one color.
The word 'robot' comes from the Czech word 'robota', meaning forced labor.
The oldest written language is Sumerian, dating to around 3200 BCE.
Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words still in use today, including 'bedroom', 'lonely', and 'generous'.
The @ symbol is called 'arroba' in Spanish and Portuguese, meaning a unit of weight.
The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters.
There is a word in Japanese, 'tsundoku', meaning buying books and never reading them.
The word 'set' has the most definitions of any word in the English language — over 430.
Fear of long words is called hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.
The word 'salary' comes from 'sal' (salt) — Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt.