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

We say "pardon my French" after swearing because, in the 19th century, English-speaking people would drop French phrases into the conversation to display class, apologizing because many of their listeners wouldn't know the language. Then people hid swear words under the pretense of them being French.

Around 1000 of the world's approximately 5,000 languages are spoken solely in New Guinea.

Motto of the news satire organization, “The Onion” is “Tu stultus es” which in Latin translates to “You're an idiot.”

At the beginning of Mr. Bean episodes, as part of the opening credits, Mr. Bean falls from the sky in a beam of light, accompanied by a choir singing ‘Ecce homo qui est faba,’ which in Latin translates to ‘Behold the man who is a bean.’

Nikola Tesla could speak eight languages: Serbo-Croatian, Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and even Latin.

“Sh*tstorm” has been adopted into the German language as a perfectly polite noun meaning an internet-born controversy.

The Korean alphabetic system, known as Hangul, was introduced by King Sejong in the 1440s to improve literacy. The difficulty of Chinese characters favored privileged aristocrats, whereas Sejong's phonetic alphabets allowed Koreans of all classes to learn how to read and write.

The Dothraki language was designed to sound like Arabic to the untrained ear, or a mix between Spanish and Arabic to anyone who knows Arabic.

The English word "much" and the Spanish word "mucho" are not related at all, despite having similar definitions. "Much" comes from Proto-Germanic "mikilaz", while "mucho" comes from the Latin world "multum". Their similar appearance is a complete coincidence.

Blond(e) is one of the few words left in English that is gendered. Blond is used to describe males, while Blonde is used to describe females.