The word 'serendipity' was coined in 1754 by Horace Walpole — from an old name for Sri Lanka.

The Hawaiian language has only 13 letters — 5 vowels and 8 consonants.

The word 'quarantine' comes from Italian — quarantina means 40 days, the waiting period for plague-exposed ships.

The color 'orange' was named after the fruit — before oranges arrived in Europe, the color was simply called 'yellow-red.'

The grammar of most languages encodes social hierarchy — languages like Korean have distinct speech levels for different relationships.

Inuit languages do not have unusually many words for snow — this is a persistent linguistic myth.

Shakespeare invented over 1,700 words in the English language, including 'lonely,' 'generous,' and 'assassination.'

About 7,000 languages are spoken in the world today — one dies roughly every two weeks.

English has more irregular verbs than any other Germanic language — a result of Old Norse and Norman French influence.