38 Crazy Facts about World Languages That’ll Fascinate You

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26He and she

He and she

The gender-neutral "they" was used as the 3rd person singular in English until about 1800, when "he" and "she" became widespread to make English more like Latin.


27. The reason so many traditional legal terms come in pairs (aid and abet, null and void, part and parcel, will and testament) is that old English courts used English terms along with Latin or French terms to avoid confusion.


28. In old English, the possessive (eg. cat's) was marked by -es. This was shortened to -s, which is why there's an apostrophe (as it represents the missing 'e').


29. Eye's pupil got its name from Latin "Pupilla", which means little doll, because that's what you see when you look into someone's pupil, the little doll version of yourself.


30. The word Shampoo is derived from the Hindi word 'chāmpo' which in turn is derived from the Sanskrit root 'chapayati' meaning: "to press, knead and soothe".


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31I

I

The English language capitalizes the pronoun 'I' because it looks too small when it's in lowercase.


32. There's a 300-page book called 'A Void' that was written without ever using the letter "e". The original is in French, but there are over a dozen versions of it in different languages written by translators who also managed to compose it without ever using the most common letter of the alphabet.


33. The most complex character in the Chinese language takes 57 strokes to write. It is a noodle dish.


34. Expecto Patronum roughly translates to "I await a protector" in Latin.


35. Many English words used to be spelled phonetically (e.g. debt was 'det') until some scholars purposely added silent letters to make them look more like Greek or Latin words, sometimes erroneously.


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36Washoe

Washoe

Washoe the chimpanzee was the first non-human to use the American Sign Language. When Washoe's caretaker returned to work after a miscarriage, Washoe ignored her. The caretaker then signed "MY BABY DIED", to which Washoe replied "CRY", simulating a tear running down the caretaker's face.


37. Young children, especially twins, will often develop their own language that they can understand but is unintelligible to any adult observers.


38. There is a short German rhyme about procrastination that also rhymes when translated into English. "Morgen, morgen, nur nicht heute, sagen alle faulen leute." in English means "Later, later, not today, all the lazy people say."

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