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: