Facts about 30 European Languages

To mark the European Day of Languages and to celebrate the linguistic diversity we have in Europe,
we've decided to create a list of 30 random facts about 30 different European languages! But which
language has a word that means 'I accidentally ate the whole thing'? And which language nearly replaced
English as the official language of the USA? Read on to find out...
1.

The longest single word palindrome in Italian is onorarono ('they honored').

2.

In Albania, shaking your head means yes whilst nodding means no (occasionally people do it
the other way around, which makes it even more confusing!)

3.

There is a special grammar tense in Bulgarian that is used only when a person is retelling a story
that he/she hasnt personally witnessed but just heard. The tense can be used even if the person
was a main participant in the story but cant really remember it.

4.

Czech has many words that are made up entirely of consonants; for
example krk ('neck'); prst('finger'); smrk ('pine tree'); smrt ('death').

5.

Danish was the official language of Norway until about 1830 and of Iceland until 1944.

6.

Around 1% of English words are of Dutch origin: e.g. 'boss', 'coleslaw', 'cookie', 'dam', 'dock',
'easel', 'frolic', 'gas', 'landscape', 'luck', Santa Claus (from Sinterklaas), 'skates', 'snoop', 'splinter',
'spook', 'stove', 'waffle', 'walrus'

7.

The longest word in the Finnish language, that isn't a compound word,
isepaejaerjestelmaellistyttaemaettoemyydellaensaekaeaen. In English it means 'even with their lack
of ability to disorganize.

8.

French is also the only language, (along with English), that is taught in every country of the
world, with 100 million students and 2 million teachers 20 % of whom are outside of Francophone
countries.

9.

A word with no translation. The Georgian word Shemomedjamo means 'to eat past the point of
fullness because the food tastes so good'. It roughly translates to I accidentally ate the whole thing.

10.

German almost became the official language of the United States of America. The Continental
Congress, convened in Philadelphia during the Revolution, at one time considered adopting a new
language for the future of the United States, with the aim of cutting off all ties with England. Among
the languages suggested were German, Hebrew and French. When it finally came to a vote, English
narrowly won just by one vote!

11.

There are no words for 'yes' or 'no' in Irish, but that doesn't mean there's no way to answer a
question. You communicate "yes" and "no" with a verb form. The answer to 'did they sell the house?'
would be '(they) sold' or '(they) didn't sell.'

12.

Latvian and Lithuanian are the only two living languages from the Baltic languages family.

13.

There is an abundance of nature words in Lithuanian, probably because the people are so fond
of the outdoors. This is particularly evident in traditional personal names such
as Rta ('Rue'), Aura('Dawn'), and Giedrius ('Cloudless').

14.

Luxembourg is a genuine trilingual society. It has three official languages: Luxembourgish,

French and German. It also has a education system that is tri-lingual. For the first four years, children
are taught in Luxembourgian, before giving way to German, which in turn gives way to French.
Likewise, in the country's parliament, debates are held in Luxembourgish, draft legislation is drafted
in German, while the statute laws are written in French.

15.

In Malta, the babys first year is regarded as dangerous, so the first birthday Il-Quccija is a
happy occasion. On this day the childs future is suggested when a tray of small objects is carried in
and placed on the floor. The baby is then put down and allowed to crawl in any direction it wants.
What it picks up from the tray signifies its future. The traditional objects include: an egg (bajda) for an
abundance of happiness; a pen (pinna) for a desk job; some coins (muniti) for wealth; a ball (ballun)
for sport); rosary beads (kuruna) for the Church; a book (ktieb) for a lawyer; and these days other
items such as a stethoscope (a doctor) or a CD (a DJ).

16.

Moldova is one of the few countries in the world that celebrates Language Day. Limba
noastrwhich stands for 'our tongue' or 'our language' is a public holiday observed annually on 31st
August.

17.

Whereas many languages opt for a you-thou kind of distinction between younger and older
people and formal and informal situations, Polish speakers use titles: Pan and Pani meaning Sir and
Lady.

18.

During the times of Portuguese exploration some words entered the English language, such as
'cobra', 'flamingo' and 'piranha'.

19.

Over a quarter of the world's scientific literature is published in Russian. Russian is also applied
as a means of coding and storage of universal knowledge6070% of all world information is
published in the English and Russian languages.

20.

There are around fifty Slovenian dialects, which are sometimes so different that their speakers
have difficulties understanding each other

21.

Slovene is one of very rare languages to use dual grammatical forms in addition to the singular
and the plural. The beauty of it is best seen in the sphere of love and romanticism, because it clearly
refers to only two people.

22.

Silbo Gomero also known as el silbo ('the whistle'), is a whistled language spoken by inhabitants
of La Gomera in the Canary Islands. It is structured in such a way that the islanders are able to
mimic the spoken language of the region Castilian Spanish through whistles. While there have
been reports of other whistling languages in the world, Silbo Gomero is the only one that is fully
developed and practiced by an entire community. The language is being taught to small school
children in a bid to keep it alive.

23.

Sweden is a country that not only values the concept of a lack of extremes but even has a word
for it lagom. In this society, equality is everything and hierarchies are supposed to be non-existent.
Everything and everyone is supposed to be just lagom which is not to say boring, so much as not
too much and not too little', just right.

24.

It is believed that George Gershwin wrote one of the worlds most famous songs, Summertime,
after being inspired by an old Ukrainian lullaby called Sleep Is Tiptoeing About performed by the
Ukrainian National Chorus.

25.

During WWII, the Dutch would identify Germans by asking them to pronounce the
wordScheveningen. Consequently, the word is a well-known shibboleth, a Hebrew term for a word
that, if pronounced correctly, distinguishes you clearly as belonging to a certain group.

26.

Similarly, the Flemish used to ask people to pronounce Schild en Vriend (meaning 'shield and
friend'), when trying to identify French-speaking spies.

27.

Esperanto is an artificial language, but is spoken by about 500,000 to 2,000,000 people, and 2
feature films have been done in the language.

28.

Basque, spoken around the Pyrenees in France and Spain, is the only language in Europe not to
be related to any other known language.

29.

Argentina is the only other country in the world where Welsh is spoken - alongside Wales of
course. Welsh immigrants settled in Patagonia in 1865 and kept the language.

30.

A new word in the English language is created about every 98 minutes.

EUROPEAN DAY OF LANGUAGES

We at busuu.com love languages and as its
the 10th anniversary of the European Day of
Languages we would like to present you with
one curious language fact for each year.
Before we get going, we have great news for
you! Our back-to-school promotion was such a success that we decided to extend the offer and
grant you a 15% discount on all our products until Sunday, the 2nd of October 2011.
Just like the Council of Europe, which created the European Day of Languages as part of the
European year of languages in 2001, busuu.com wants to encourage language learning, not
only in Europe but across the whole world. In case you didnt already know, our online
community connects people from over 200 different countries, with each person teaching their
native language whilst also learning new ones.
Todays blog entry is not so much about learning languages (for study advice, check
our motivational tips), but about language curiosities. Did you know that:
1. There are between 6,000 and 7,000 languages in the world spoken by six billion people.

2. Experts warn that by the end of this century half of these languages will disappear if nothing
is done.
3. It is estimated that in the United States alone, 115 out of 280 languages disappeared in the
last five centuries.
4. The majority of the worlds languages are spoken in Asia and Africa.
5. At least half of the worlds population are bilingual or multilingual.
6. Bilingualism not only makes the learning of additional languages easier, itenriches the
thinking process, as well.
7. Many languages have over 50,000 words, but in everyday conversation people use the same
few hundred words.
8. Languages are constantly changing: In the past, English borrowed words from other
languages, now many languages borrow English words.
9. At the age of five, a child already has a vocabulary of several thousand words.
10. Back to Europe: There are about 225 indigenous languages in Europe. Thats 3% of the
worlds total.