Did you know about these language facts? #3

Did you know?

Bulgarians nod their heads from left to right to convey “yes” and up and down to convey “no.” Yes, No

Unlike today, at the time of the French Revolution 75% of French citizens did not speak French as a mother tongue.

In the Archi language, spoken around the Caspian Sea in southern Russia, each verb has the possibility of up to 1.5 million conjugations.

Even if a Japanese person doesen’t agree, they will always say “yes”, hai, to keep the listener talking. They will almost never speak the word “no”, but convey their dissent in a circuitous way.

The Irish (Gaeilge) language has 3 diffrent sets of words for numbers, one for arithmetic and dates/times, one for couting people, and one for counting non-people.

At leas 10% of the world’s current languages do not have an alphabet and they remain unwritten.

Just like people learning spoken languages have accents, people learning sign languages have accents as well.

In Vietnam, crossing fingers, especially when directed at another person, is considered to be an offensive reference to female gnitalia.

In 1985, five Americans were arrested in Rome, Italy when jubilantly dancing and using Texas Longhorns (rock & roll/bull horns) gesture, celebrating a footbal victory, while outside the Vatican. There, the symbol especially when directed to someone, is considered offensive.

The Korean writing system, despite how looks, is not ideographic like Chinese but phonetic like English. It also uses punctuation marks almost identical to Western ones.