The word 'disaster' comes from the Italian 'disastro' — literally meaning 'bad star,' reflecting ancient belief in astral influence on fate.

Language is transmitted culturally, not genetically — children adopted across language communities learn the local language perfectly.

Spoonerisms — transposing initial sounds of words — are named after Rev. William Spooner who famously made them.

The Basque language of northern Spain is a language isolate — it has no known relatives anywhere in the world.

Creole languages form when children of pidgin speakers create a fully structured native language.

There are about 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today, but roughly half are endangered.

The concept of a 'dead language' is complex — Latin died as a spoken tongue but gave birth to French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian.

The Hawaiian alphabet has only 13 letters.

There are roughly 7,000 languages, but about 23 languages account for over half the world's speakers.