WORDS AROUND THE WORLD
The Hawaiian alphabet has only twelve letters.
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Jenga means ‘to build’ in Swahili.
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In Korean, there are no words for ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, but there are words for an older or younger brother, and an older or younger sister.
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In Chinese, the words ‘crisis’ and ‘opportunity’ are the same.
There is no Albanian word for headache.
TAXI is spelled the same way in English, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, Czech and Portuguese.
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The word ‘mafia’ was created as an acronym for Morte alla francia italia adela, meaning ‘Death to the French is Italy’s cry’.
The Albanian language, one of Europe’s oldest, is not derived from any other language. And the alphabet was invented as recently as 1908. It contains thirty-six letters but no ‘w’.
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The German language combines words to make composite words. So, for example, the single German word for ‘Favorite break-time sandwich’ is Lieblingspausenbrot.
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The Lao language has no words ending in ‘s’. So they call their country Lao instead of Laos.
There’s a Mexican language named Zoque-Ayapeneco which has withered away until there were just two people in the whole world who spoke it. The trouble is that those two men — both in their seventies — hate each other and refuse to speak to one another.
The Lozi language of Zambia has at least forty words meaning ‘woman’. Each describes a woman at a particular stage in life. For example, an unmarried woman, a newlywed just arrived in her husband’s village, a widow etc.
In the Malay language, plurals are formed by repeating the word. For example, the Malay word for ‘man’ is laki so the word for ‘men’ is laki-laki.
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Romanian words sound similar to some Italian, French or Spanish words because Romania is the only country in Eastern Europe where people speak a language of Latin origin.
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There are African languages that have fewer than a hundred people speaking (each of) them. The reason a language has so few speakers is because those people who speak it live in a closed community cut off from most of the rest of the world. As the world discovers them and they discover the world, they’re obliged to learn a more popular language and so their native language dies.
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Nearly half of all Germans are fluent in English, but only three percent of Germans speak French fluently.
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In Bulgaria, shaking the head from side to side means yes and nodding up and down means no.
Because of the mix of cultures and languages, many Mauritians are multilingual. A person might speak Bhojpuri at home, French to a supervisor at work, English to a government official and Creole to friends.
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Many people in the Syrian town of Ma’loula still speak
Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth.
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A lot of modern English first names come from Greek words.
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The phrase ‘running amok’ is derived from the Papua New Guinean word amok meaning ‘rage’.
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English has borrowed many words from Arabic. A few are: alkali, caraway, checks, chemistry, saffron and satin.
In South Africa the @ symbol is referred to as an aapstert which means a ‘monkey’s tail’. In Israel, it’s called a strudel, in Slovakia, it’s known as a ‘pickled herring’ while in Denmark it’s often called an ‘elephant’s trunk’.
The word ‘thug’ comes from the Hindu word thag which referred to the religious fanatics who plagued India, carrying out acts of brutality in the name of their goddess.
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In Guyana, the same phrases and sentences are used for both questions and statements. You can tell the difference by the way the words are spoken — by their tone. So, for example, the statement: ‘Ben is doing well at school’, spoken in a flat, even tone, means that Ben is doing well at school. The same words said in a higher pitch and a questioning tone means ‘Is Ben doing well at school?’
Polish has some lovely names for months. For example, April in Polish means ‘flowers’, July means ‘linden tree’, September means ‘heather’ and November translates as ‘falling leaves’.
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Between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, French was the language of diplomacy and culture in Europe, and many northern European monarchs spoke it in their courts. Today, there are some 125 million French speakers worldwide.
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Jamaicans refer to their major crops in terms of gold. Sugar is brown gold, bananas are green gold, bauxite is red gold and citrus fruits are sun gold.
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Sanskrit is considered as the mother of all higher languages.
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Over 800 different languages are spoken in Papua New Guinea. With a population of just over six million people, that’s about one language for every 7,500 people. The result of this is that there are villages within five miles of each other which speak different languages.
Asia has the most languages and the most speakers, accounting for sixty-one percent of all language speakers in the world.
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Africa has the second largest number of languages after Asia but accounts for under twelve percent of all the world’s language speakers.
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In the Netherlands, they have a wonderful expression of amazement that translates as ‘That breaks my clog’. The sturdy wooden clog is still worn by some Dutch farmers because it is waterproof in damp fields.
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Luxembourg has its own language — Luxembourgish — which is also sometimes spoken in parts of Belgium, France and Germany.
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The Filipino language reflects the importance of rice to the Filipino people. Their language has several words for rice, including words to mean rice that is harvested but not cleaned, rice that is still cooking in a pot and rice that is ready to eat.
Irish words that have entered the English language include banshee, galore, bother, smithereen, hooligan, tantrum and donnybrook.
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The Phoenician alphabet, which was in use around 1600 BC, is widely considered the foundation for alphabetic writing in the West and Middle East.
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COUNTRIES THAT HAVE ENGLISH AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
American Samoa, Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Ascension Islands, Australia
The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize
Bermuda, Botswana Cameroon
Canada
Cayman Islands
Channel Islands
Christmas Island
Cook Islands
Dominica, Dutch Antilles
Falkland Islands, Fiji
The Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar
Grenada, Guam, Guyana
Hong Kong
Ireland, Isle of Man
Jamaica
Kiribati
Liberia
Madagascar, Malawi
Marshall Islands, Mauritius
Montserrat
Namibia, Nauru
New Zealand, Nigeria, Palau
Papua New Guinea
Pitcairn Islands, Puerto Rico
St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia
Samoa, Seychelles
Sierra Leone, Singapore
Solomon Islands
South Africa, Sudan
Swaziland
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago, Tristan
da Cunha,
Turks and Caicos Islands
Tuvalu
Uganda, United Kingdom
United States of America
Vanuatu
Zambia, Zimbabwe
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE FRENCH AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Algeria
Belgium, Benin
Burkina Faso, Burundi
Cameroon, Canada
Central African Republic
Chad, Comoros, Congo
Democratic Republic of Congo
Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea
France, French Guiana
French Polynesia
Gabon, Guadeloupe, Guinea
Haiti
Ivory Coast
Luxembourg
Madagascar, Mali, Martinique
Mauritania, Monaco
New Caledonia, Niger
Reunion Senegal
The Seychelles, Switzerland
Togo
Vanuatu
Wallis and Futuna
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE SPANISH AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Argentina
Bolivia
Chile, Colombia
Costa Rica, Cuba
Dominican Republic
Ecuador, El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama, Paraguay
Peru, Puerto Rico
Spain, Uruguay
Venezuela
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE PORTUGUESE AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Angola
Brazil
Cape Verde
East Timor
Equatorial Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Mozambique
Portugal
Sao Tome and Principe
Uruguay
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE GERMAN AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Austria
Belgium
Germany
Liechtenstein
Luxembourg
Switzerland
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE DUTCH AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Aruba
Belgium
Dutch Antilles
Netherlands
Suriname
COUNTRIES THAT HAVE ITALIAN AS THEIR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE (OR ONE OF THEM)
Italy
San Marino
Switzerland
Vatican City