Languages Facts for Kids
Weird and wonderful language facts
The 14th-century Persian poet Hafez is so revered in Iran that many Iranians have memorized dozens of his poems by heart. His collection, the Divan of Hafez, is found in almost every Iranian household and is used for a form of fortune-telling called Fal-e Hafez, where a poem is opened at random to seek guidance. His influence on Persian culture has lasted over 600 years.
Children learning language often spontaneously 'regularize' irregular forms — saying 'goed' instead of 'went' or 'mouses' instead of 'mice.' Rather than indicating error, this reveals an extraordinary cognitive achievement: the child has discovered the regular rule and is applying it consistently, even overriding exceptions. This process shows language acquisition is creative and rule-based, not just memorization.
For the vast majority of human history — over 95% of the time humans have had language — all languages were purely spoken, with no written form at all. Even today, about 2,000 of the world's 7,000 languages have never been written down. The presumption that 'real' languages must be written is a bias that most linguists argue against strongly.
The loanwords in a language are a historical record of cultural contact. English's Arabic loanwords (algebra, alcohol, cotton, sugar, coffee) reflect medieval Arab influence on European science and trade. English's French loanwords (beef, pork, government, court) reflect Norman French influence after the 1066 conquest. Every loanword tells a story of two cultures meeting and exchanging.
Japanese has an elaborate system of honorific speech called 'keigo' that requires speakers to use different verb forms, vocabulary, and speech patterns depending on their relationship to the person they're addressing. Using the wrong level of speech can seem rude or overly familiar. There are three main levels: polite (teineigo), respectful (sonkeigo) when referring to others' actions, and humble (kenjōgo) when referring to one's own actions.
Research shows that people with non-native accents are unconsciously perceived as less credible or trustworthy, even when they are saying exactly the same things as native speakers. This 'accent bias' affects everything from job interviews to courtroom testimony. Linguists argue that accent discrimination is a form of social prejudice, similar to other forms of bias, and should be actively countered.
Warlpiri, an Aboriginal Australian language spoken by about 3,000 people in the Northern Territory, has an extremely complex system for expressing when and how actions happen. Its system of grammatical 'aspect' allows speakers to describe actions with great precision regarding whether they are complete, ongoing, habitual, or about to happen. The language is also notable for having separate verb forms for singular, dual (exactly two), and plural numbers.
There have been many serious movements to reform English spelling to make it more phonetic and logical. Playwright George Bernard Shaw famously left money in his will to fund the development of a new English alphabet. Noah Webster (of Merriam-Webster dictionaries) successfully simplified some American spellings in the 1800s — which is why Americans write 'color' and 'center' instead of British 'colour' and 'centre.'
The largest Chinese dictionary, the Zhonghua Zihai, contains over 85,000 characters. However, the average educated Chinese speaker knows about 8,000 characters, and just 3,000 characters are enough to read a newspaper. By comparison, the Oxford English Dictionary contains over 600,000 words, though fluent English speakers typically use a vocabulary of around 20,000 to 40,000 words in daily life.
Bilingual and multilingual people often 'code-switch' — seamlessly switching between languages within a single conversation or even a single sentence. This is not confusion or imperfect language learning; it is a sophisticated linguistic skill. Code-switching follows its own grammatical rules and is used strategically for emotional effect, to express group identity, or because one language has a better word for a particular concept.