Languages evolve continuously — Shakespeare's English is dramatically different from today's just 400 years later.

The fastest spoken language is Japanese — measured at 7.84 syllables per second on average.

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 Dao De Jing, foundational text of Taoism, is the world's second most translated text after the Bible.

Languages with no future tense have speakers who save more money — possibly because they don't distinguish future from present as strongly.

There are no true synonyms — words with similar meanings always differ in connotation or register.

Urdu and Hindi are mutually intelligible in speech but written in completely different scripts.

English is the official language of the sky — all pilots and air traffic controllers must speak it.

The word 'OK' may be the most recognized word in the world — understood in virtually every language.