Ever wonder if all the words people use are words that actually exist? By exist we mean they are recognized and included in English dictionaries. Well, some of the words that people confidently use on a day-to-day basis do not exist. Some say that the use of these words highlights a crucial language feature (i.e. change), while […]
Language belongs to us and we do with it what we please. We invent new words, new spellings and sometimes whole new languages. When it comes to words, we decide what they mean and we change their meanings at will. That’s what English speakers did to the words below. They used to mean something then took
10 Common Words That Used To Mean Something Completely Different. Read More »
Words really don’t have any logic to them. You can’t just work out the meaning of words based on the sounds that make them up. That’s because words are arbitrary. So if you don’t speak Chinese, you can’t possibly figure out the words for, say, “breakfast” or “fridge”. Different people agree to give different combinations of sounds different meanings.
5 Words That Sound The Same In Almost Every Language. Read More »
Have you ever wondered why we say tick-tock, King-Kong, and flip-flop? And why do kong-king and tock-tick sound so awkward to our ears? Why is it fiddle-faddle and pitter-patter rather than faddle-fiddle and patter-pitter? Why?…well ’cause! It turns out that this is one of the unwritten rules that English native speakers know, but don’t know they know. I will unravel this amazing rule here for you. Please bear with
Words are fun. They are what gets us, language nerds, turned on. When you speak more than one language, you realize that words mean different things in different languages. Sometimes an innocent word in a language can sound really bad in another, and that’s where the real fun is. Below are some words that are
Innocent Words That Sound Completely Inappropriate In Other Languages. Read More »
No language has all of the words, and English is no exception. While you can express the complex feeling of “insecurity, fear, concern, and envy over relative lack of possessions, status or something of great personal value, particularly in reference to a comparator, a rival, or a competitor.” with one word (i.e. jealousy), some other
20 Fascinating Words From Other Languages with no English Equivalent. Read More »
People like counting. People like to compare things. These two trends are exaggerated even further on the internet. So it’s no wonder that there are websites like this, Global Language Monitor, that tout the number of words in English as some precise number (1,013,913 and growing at 15/day), compared to woeful 2nd place finisher Mandarin.
This is Why You Can Never Know How Many Words are in a Language. Read More »
