13 Wild, Little-Known Quirks In Languages From Around The World

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13 Wild, Little-Known Quirks In Languages From Around The World

Linguistics: a confusing-to-spell word that denotes an even more confusing-to-understand field of study. Across the globe, disparate communities of humans have developed wildly different ways to communicate with one another. Then, as they interact, they've tried to translate their specific mouth-sounds into the same specific mouth-sounds other communities of humans make. Is any of these type-face letter combos sense-making? Who knows! That's the beauty and mystery of language. We here at Cracked are no strangers to awesome translations and/or mistranslations. Plus, you know…let's just say the quiet part out loud…we're writers, so on top of being ComedyNerds, we are also Language Dorks.

That's why the endlessly mind-blowing ways languages interact is interesting. Dutch is so difficult that kids learn language slower than others. In Thai, “5” sounds just like “ha” … so their text laughing looks pretty unusual if you’re used to the English-language version. And that's not all! Here’s the full story, plus 12 others:

They speak Spanish in Chile, but they don't have a word for lime at all. Why? There are no limes in Chile. Recipes translated from English use the more-or-less literal translation lima, and people usually just replace it with lemons. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Source: PRI

In Scotland, there are over 400 expressions related in some way to snow. The official count is 421, and it includes words like flindrikin (a slight snow shower), unbrak (the beginning of a thaw) and skelf (a large snowflake). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Source: BBC

One Nigerian community has two different languages for men and women. In Ubang, men and women understand each other, but don't speak each other's language. Boys grow up speaking the women's language, but switch. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Source: BBC

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