33 Strange Language Facts That Will Blow Your Mind!
Looking for precise and professional language translation? Look no further! I specialize in accurately translating English to Haitian Creole, French, and Spanish.
Trust me to deliver exceptional results that capture the essence of your message. Contact me today for flawless language translations.
🤓Are there really languages with no colour? No numbers? No time? Keep watching to find out 33 strange language facts that are sure to blow your mind!
📺 WATCH NEXT:
How Languages Work: A Quick Grammar Guide 👉🏼
✍🏼 ON THE BLOG:
Want some more language trivia? We’ve got you covered!
How European Countries Got Their Names 👉🏼
💻 CERTIFICATE OF ONLINE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CEOLT)
Interested in teaching English or another language online? Check out my premier language-teaching course 👉🏼
⬇️ GET MY FREE STORYLEARNING® KIT:
Discover how to learn any foreign language faster through the power of story with my free StoryLearning® Kit
👉🏼
📖 LEARN A LANGUAGE THROUGH THE POWER OF STORY:
Stories are the best way I have found to learn ANY language. Forget the boring textbooks and time-wasting apps and learn a language the natural, effective way with one of my story-based courses. 👉🏼
🗣 SUPERCHARGE STORIES WITH SPEAKING PRACTICE
Many StoryLearning students have found great success combining story-based learning with 1-on-1 speaking practice. We recommend LanguaTalk for finding talented tutors who can help you become more confident.
Book a free trial with a 5-star tutor here 👉🏼
📸 FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM:
Get daily language tips, comics, reels, and more on Instagram (@iwillteachyoualanguage) 👉🏼
⏱ TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – Intro
0:13 – Fact #1
0:36 – Fact #2
1:03 – Fact #3
1:12 – Fact #4
1:25 – Fact #5
1:44 – Fact #6
2:26 – Fact #7
3:11 – Fact #8
4:08 – Fact #9
4:25 – Fact #10
4:50 – Fact #11
5:12 – Fact #12
6:05 – Fact #13
6:43 – Fact #14
7:14 – Fact #15
7:55 – Fact #16
8:50 – Fact #17
9:24 – Fact #18
9:31 – Fact #19
9:59 – Fact #20
10:29 – Fact #21
10:51 – Fact #22
11:55 – Fact #23
12:25 – Fact #24
12:50 – Fact #25
13:15 – Fact #26
13:32 – Fact #27
14;12 – Fact #28
14:43 – Fact #29
14:51 – Fact #30
15:02 – Fact #31
15:40 – Fact #32
16:13 – Fact #33
📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:
🎬 Video Clips:
NEW YORK CITY Walking Tour [4K] TIMES SQUARE … CROWDED !!!
Yuri Gagarin – First Words Spoken by a Human in Space
A Language without Numbers?
Last Song of a Kalahari Bushman
ENTIRE GRWM SPEAKING ONLY IN SHONA – I TRIED MY BEST LOL (Zimbabwean language with subtitles)
Kurt Darren – Kaptein (Span Die Seile)
The full chemical name of Titin – a sample
This Turkish Language Isn’t Spoken, It’s Whistled
Chiflidos en la neblina
WIKITONGUES: Martha speaking Aymara
How many words in the English language?
Languages of The World, Episode Eleven: ROTOKAS – LANGUAGE WITH THE SMALLEST ALPHABET IN THE WORLD.
Twin talk! Twins speaking their secret language! AKA Cryptophasia
Listen to the Khmer language of Cambodia | Chantara speaking Khmer | Wikitongues
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz (HD)
The Basque language, casually spoken | Andrew speaking Biscayan | Wikitongues
Berlitz German Coastguard
🖼 Images:
“Cardiac sarcomere structure” by Mohamed Elshennawy is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
“Brahmi pillar inscription in Sarnath” by free is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Thanks for your video. Helps us learn so much about different kinds of languages all around the world.
My pleasure!
Another strange language fact from the Philippines is that Spanish (standard variety, not creole Chavacano one) is indeed spoken by a very few Filipinos as their first language. Spanish isn’t longer taught in the primary and secondary schools in the Philippines, although I wish that someday, Spanish will be taught in the same equal footing as English as a second language.
Spanish is spoken by very few people in the present-day Philippines and is highly likely to die out altogether in the future
Or maybe about any endangered languages as ainu, hawaian, native americain.. it will help theese languages a lot
Yea, it would be awesome to see some dying languages covered and get some exposure. I want to learn a dying language some day to help it carry on.
Cool video… as always 😃
Afrikaans being the youngest language is a questionable statement – just like which country has the most official languages… 🤔 For example, according to Wikipedia in Luxembourg “…the national language Luxembourgish, [was] established in law in 1984.” I’m sure there are other (minority or otherwise) languages around the world of which something similar can be said. 🤞 Apart from that, you’re doing alright, Olly. 👍
Olly is doing more than alright, buddy 😂
I’ll take that 🙂
Luxembourgish is not younger than Afrikaans. It’s been around since 1290 AD! There are a lot more Luxembourgish writings from the early 1800s, including the first Luxembourgish poetry book. Not at all comparable to the Afrikaans situation; Afrikaans only started EVOLVING into a spoken language in the 1800s, and during this evolution it was still essentially Dutch. They might’ve recognized Luxembourgish as the ‘national language’ in 1984, but that doesn’t indicate its age as a language.
@Lisa Narramore I see your point. But this is just the famous, linguistic discussion about the difference between a dialect and a language. Olly used the “when is a language officially recognised criterion”. To me those are two different things. But hey, you are entitled to your own opinion. God bless.
Want more language facts? Check out this video. 👉🏼https://youtu.be/ILaeBQsQ-lg
They(plural) are amazing that language has unending facts we(plural) may learn of.
This is why we(singular) love languages.
In fact Surinam isn’t the only South American country whose official language isn’t a romance one, there’s also Guyana to its West whose official language is English😊😊😊
But,
English can be very romantic 🥰🥰🥰
Isn’t it interesting that Japanese is in the top 20 most spoken languages? Differently from English, Portuguese, Spanish, that were brought by colonizers to half of the planet, Japanese is the official language of only one country with a very small land area. Fascinating! The size of Portugal, Spain and England combined is of course small compared to Russia, China or even India.
Indonesian, Turkish, Vietnamese also surprised me
In fact Japanese has more speakers than German, although the ranking shown in the video seems to suggest the opposite. Likewise, Portuguese is nowadays more widely spoken than Russian.
@Lorenzo Salvioni Yeah. Tons of content PT-BR online. Portuguese is my mother tongue.
But it’s interesting to know about German. How many countries speak German as official language? Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein? I wouldn’t know what other than Standard German would there be.
@Wlad Figgs O alemão também é oficial no Luxemburgo, assim como numa pequena região aqui na Bélgica e no Suedtirol/Alto Adige que é uma província da Itália
English being number one indicates that second language speakers are also counted. Although in that light I would expect Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) to rank higher.
German scoring that high is a bit weird, ofcourse a few million Dutch are able to speak and understand some German, I’m Dutch and for me German is easy to read (newspapers, books) and I can have a conversation in German too, although I have absolutely no clue how to use the case grammar properly, maybe it’s the same in Sweden and west Poland and the Chech republic.
I’ve been watching your videos for eight years plus….This one has made me laugh the most.
Polish Scrabble? sounds fun. “Dobrze bawię się” 🙂
Interesting fact, Klingon has more speakers than Esperanto.
Olly is a great man for plugging his books and courses in his videos but i did buy his portuguese short stories at the book shop and it is a very decent resource. Well done Olly. Boa Sorte
Aren’t there younger official sign languages than Africaans?
Māori also has the concept of time where the past is in front of you and the future behind. Or at least it does traditionally, because a lot of us are learning it as adults these days a lot of the traditional phrases about time are getting twisted and reversed to line up with English world view.
the hopi one is wrong, this was something that was thought a while ago but has been debunkt since. they use aspects to communicate time, similar to yucatec mayan. but they can speak just as well about time as any other language
For exemple such a Polish word – zruszczywszy 😅
If you did a book series for Esperanto that’d be great, get us out of Duolingo
Hi Olly. Amazing facts! Just a remark though on #14: I think the rule should be to indicate every amino acid in the molecule, rather than each atom, otherwise every carbon, nitrogen, and hydrogen would have to be mentioned.
*46 languages only have a single speaker*. The story goes that an indigenous language of central Mexico only had 2 speakers, who were brothers, but unfortunately they had had a big argument and were no longer on speaking terms with one another ….
One of the most powerful videos you ever made on your channel I am gonna share it on my page Olly really impressive