Whistled languages, like Silbo Gomero in the Canary Islands, encode full speech and are UNESCO Heritage.

The word 'silly' originally meant 'blessed' in Old English — its meaning shifted dramatically over the centuries.

The concept of a 'dead language' is complex — Latin died as a spoken tongue but gave birth to French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian.

The Basque language of northern Spain is a language isolate — it has no known relatives anywhere in the world.

Language shapes thought — the Pirahã's lack of color words means they perceive fewer color distinctions.

The longest word in the English language in a major dictionary is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis' at 45 letters.

Linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that humans have an innate 'universal grammar' — a built-in capacity for language.

The alphabet is a Greek invention — the Greeks added vowels to the Phoenician consonant alphabet around 800 BC.

Machu Picchu was never discovered by Spanish conquistadors — it was abandoned around 1572 and remained unknown to the outside world until 1911.