Languages Facts for Kids

"Cushion" and "fashion" are among the very few English words that end in "-shion."

Portuguese is spoken on four continents — in Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.

Hundreds of new words are added to the English dictionary every year, including recent ones like "selfie" and "emoji."

The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta.

Written Thai doesn't use spaces between words — readers have to figure out where one word ends and the next begins.

There's no single hardest language — it depends on what you already speak. For English speakers, Japanese, Arabic, and Mandarin are among the toughest.

The way pirates talk in movies — saying "arrr" and "matey" — was mostly invented by actor Robert Newton in the 1950 film Treasure Island.

All airline pilots around the world must speak English, because it's the official language of aviation.

Many English animal names come from other languages — "okapi" comes from the Lese language of the Congo.

Hungarian has 18 grammatical cases for nouns, while English really only has two (like "he" vs "him").