Mirela
Language oddities are all around us. These linguistic peculiarities evolve over time, borrow from one another, and sometimes develop quirks that seem to defy logic. But that’s part of the charm of working in the localization and translation industry,
Words that mean their own opposites
Also known as contronyms or auto-antonyms, these words have meanings that contradict each other, depending on the context. These contradictions often arise from historical shifts in meaning or the influence of multiple languages over time.
A few notable examples:
- In English, dust can mean both to remove dust (dusting the shelves) and to add dust (dusting a cake with sugar).
- In French, hôte can mean both “host” and “guest,” depending on the context.
- In Sanskrit, śāstra can mean both “command” and “prohibition.”
- In Russian, простить means both “to forgive” and “to excuse” or “to abandon”, depending on usage.
Languages without numbers
While numbers seem essential to daily life, some cultures function without specific numerical words (or they count to just a few numbers). Individuals in these cultures are often referred to as anumeric people, and while they’re doing extremely well in their environments, they still sometimes struggle with activities that require discrimination between quantities.
- The Pirahã language of the Amazon rainforest has no words for exact numbers. Instead of saying “three birds,” speakers use relative terms like a few or many. Researchers believe the reason is not that they can’t learn numbers—numbers are simply not useful in their culture.
- The Munduruku language, spoken by an indigenous group in Brazil, has words for numbers up to five but anything beyond is described in approximate terms like some or a lot.
- In Australian Aboriginal languages such as Warlpiri, counting is done with words like one, two, some, and many.
Grammatical gender can be wildly inconsistent
It is estimated that 38% of the world’s population speaks a gendered language. So there are plenty of languages that assign genders to nouns, but these assignments often seem arbitrary.
Here are a few examples:
- In German, the word for “girl” (Mädchen) is neuter, even though it refers to a female person. This is because the suffix -chen (a diminutive) always takes the neuter gender.
- In French, la barbe (beard) is feminine, while le moustache (mustache) is masculine—despite both being facial hair!
- In Russian, солнце (sun) is neuter, while луна (moon) is feminine, but in German, the sun (die Sonne) is feminine, and the moon (der Mond) is masculine.
- In Hebrew, numbers have gender, meaning you have to change the word for “two” depending on whether you’re talking about “two books” (masculine) or “two tables” (feminine).
The possible reason for this? Linguists believe these gender assignments often come from historical grammatical structures rather than logical reasoning.
Untranslatable words
Some languages have words that capture specific ideas or emotions so precisely that they have no direct translation in other languages. These words highlight how different cultures express emotions and experiences in ways that may not have direct equivalents in other languages.
Some interesting untranslatable words include:
- Tingo (Rapa Nui, Easter Island) – The act of gradually borrowing things from a friend’s house until nothing is left.
- Iktsuarpok (Inuktitut) – The feeling of anticipation that makes you keep checking to see if someone is coming.
- Fernweh (German) – A deep longing for distant places, similar to wanderlust but with a hint of melancholy.
- Sisu (Finnish) – A unique form of resilience and determination in the face of adversity.
- Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese) – The act of running your fingers through a loved one’s hair.
Languages that change depending on who you’re talking to
Speakers of some languages adjust their vocabulary and grammar based on social hierarchy and politeness levels. These systems reflect deep cultural values around respect.
- Javanese (spoken in Indonesia) has multiple speech levels: Ngoko (informal) for talking to friends, Krama madya (polite) for everyday respectful speech, and Krama inggil (highly respectful) for addressing elders or superiors.
- Korean has complex honorifics that change how you address someone based on age, status, and familiarity. Speaking to an elder requires different verb endings and respectful terms.
- Japanese also has multiple politeness levels. For example, the word taberu (“to eat”) becomes meshiagaru when showing respect. Pronouns change—men may say boku or ore for “I,” while women may say watashi or atashi in different situations.
Languages without a word for ‘yes’ or ‘no’
Now here’s another interesting language oddity: while most languages have simple ways to say “yes” and “no,” some do not. This forces speakers to provide more context when answering questions.
Here’s what we mean:
- Latin didn’t have single words for “yes” or “no.” Instead, speakers repeated the verb from the question: Videsne hoc? (“Do you see this?”) → Video (“I see”).
- In Welsh, responses depend on the verb in the question. Wyt ti’n hoffi coffi? (“Do you like coffee?”) → Ydw (“I do”) or Nag ydw (“I do not”).
- Mandarin Chinese often requires repeating the verb: Nǐ yǒu qián ma? (“Do you have money?”) → Yǒu (“Have”) or Méiyǒu (“Not have”).
E-Prime, a version of English without “to be”
On a similar note, we have a form of English that completely removes the verb “to be” in all its forms—is, am, are, was, were, be, being, been. This language never (go figure!) became mainstream, but it does remain an interesting experiment in language and logic.
E-Prime (short for “English Prime”) was proposed by D. David Bourland Jr., a student of the famous philosopher and linguist Alfred Korzybski (who developed General Semantics). Bourland took Korzybski’s ideas and pushed them further by suggesting that removing “to be” could help people think more clearly and avoid misleading statements.
If you want to speak in E-Prime, you have to restructure sentences to avoid “to be”:
- “This cake is delicious.” → “I enjoy the taste of this cake.”
- “You are wrong.” → “I see the situation differently.”
- “The sky is blue.” → “The sky looks blue to me.”
Writing systems that don’t match their sounds
One of the biggest language oddities is the inconsistency between how words are written and how they are pronounced. Some languages have near-perfect phonetic spelling, meaning words are written exactly as they sound, while others have writing systems full of silent letters and unpredictable pronunciations.
To exemplify:
- English is notorious for inconsistent spelling. Through, though, tough—All contain “ough,” yet they are pronounced differently.
- French retains many silent letters (beaucoup sounds like “bo-coo”).
- Chinese uses logograms, meaning each character represents a word rather than a sound.
- Tibetan preserves silent letters from historical pronunciations, making reading and writing vastly different from spoken language.
Languages that use sounds we don’t expect
Human speech contains a vast range of sounds,, but some of them are really hard to pronounce by non-native speakers. Some languages include clicks, tones, ejectives, and even whistled speech—for some of us, reproducing these sounds seems nearly impossible.
These are some unexpected sounds used in languages around the world:
- Zulu & Xhosa (Bantu languages of South Africa) – These languages incorporate click sounds.
- Georgian – This language has five ejective consonants, making its speech sound intense and forceful.
- Mandarin Chinese – Has four tones. So, the meaning of the word ma can mean “mother” (mā), “hemp” (má), “horse” (mǎ), or “scold” (mà) depending on pitch.
- Silbo Gomero – A whistled version of Spanish used by shepherds to communicate across the valleys of La Gomera island.
When acronyms refer to themselves
Acronyms are already a fun part of language—taking long phrases and shrinking them down into something easier to remember. But sometimes, language takes a weird turn, and acronyms become recursive, meaning they include themselves in their own definition.
Some famous recursive acronyms:
- GNU – It’s the acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix,” and the “G” in GNU stands for “GNU.”
- PHP – Originally, PHP stood for “Personal Home Page,” but as it evolved, developers decided to rename it to “PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor.” The problem? PHP is inside its own definition. If we expand it, we get “(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) Hypertext Preprocessor.”
- WINE – This is a software tool that lets you run Windows programs on Linux. WINE stand for: “WINE Is Not an Emulator.” That’s right—the definition itself insists that WINE is not an emulator, but it still uses its own name in the acronym.
Wrapping up
These fascinating language oddities remind us that language isn’t just a rigid set of rules—it’s a living, evolving reflection of human creativity and culture. What seems strange in one language might be completely normal in another, proving that communication is as diverse as the people who use it.
The fun part of doing localization is, you will sometimes come across a bizarre grammatical rule, a word with no equivalent in another language, or an acronym that loops forever. Language is weird, and that’s what makes it wonderful.