Linguistics Facts

In Chinese, the KFC slogan "finger lickin' good" comes out as "eat your fingers off".

If you mouth the word "colorful" to someone, it looks like you are saying "I love you".

The sentence "The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog." uses every letter of the alphabet!

The words ‘racecar,’ ‘kayak’ and ‘level’ are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left (palindromes).

In parts of Albania and Bulgaria, particularly among older generations, a side-to-side head shake means 'yes' while an upward head tilt means 'no' — the opposite of most countries.

Longest officially recognized place name is Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu.

The Hawaiian alphabet has 13 letters.

The word "listen" contains the same letters as "silent."

The United States does not have an official language.

The longest word in the English language is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis — a 45-letter term that was deliberately invented to hold that very title!

The word taxi is spelled the same in English, German, French, Swedish, Spanish and Portuguese.

The name Joshua is Hebrew for 'Jesus'.

The word 'set' has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

The most used letter in the English alphabet is 'E', and 'Q' is the least used!

"Dreamt" is the only English word that ends in the letters "mt"!

The word "impossible" declined in usage by roughly 50% over the course of the 20th century, according to word frequency analysis