Lingua Lore: 49 Eye-Opening Facts About Languages Around the World

"Esprit d'escalier" (literally, staircase wit) is a French term used in English to denote the tendency to think of a witty reply when it is too late, for example when taking the stairs on leaving the scene of a confrontation.

"Huh?" is a universal word and is found in roughly the same form and function in spoken languages across the globe.

The American Sign Language for “pasteurized milk” is the sign for “milk” while moving your hand past your eyes.

Marie Wilcox is the last fluent speaker of the ‘Wukchumni’ language. In an attempt to revive the dying language, she spent 7 years writing and recording a Wukchumni dictionary.

In English, multiple adjectives are supposed to be listed in the following order: Quantity, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material and Purpose.

"The Chaos" is a poem written by Gerard Nolst Trenité to show differences in pronunciation of English words which are spelled similarly. The poem only rhymes if you know how to pronounce them correctly.

Ablaut reduplication is an unwritten rule in the English language stating that "if there are three words then the vowel order must go I, A, O. If there are two words then the 1st is I and the 2nd is either A or O." It is the reason we say tick-tock, not tock-tick, ding-dong not dong-ding, etc.

American speech is punctuated with "uh" & "um", English speech with "er" & "erm", Japanese with "ā", "anō", & "ēto", German with "äh", French with "euh"-- basically, every language uses different sounds to interrupt themselves while their brain is working on forming thoughts into words.

To show how Classical Chinese had become an impractical language, linguist Chao Yuen Ren wrote a 92-character poem in which every syllable has the sound "shi". The poem "Shī Shì shí shī shǐ" translates to "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den".

In English, zero quantities are plural by default. Therefore you can write "0 results found" and "I have found no results".