Curated playlist
Subject–object–verb languages
- Bengali languageIn 1952, five students and activists were killed near the University of Dhaka.
- Hungarian languageHungarian has two separate basic words for the color red. Piros is for cheerful things, voros for natural ones.
- Marathi languageUnder Shivaji, Persian words in official Marathi papers fell from about 80% in 1630 to 37% in 1677.
- Armenian languageArmenian has no surviving relatives on its own branch of the Indo-European family. Scholars once mistook it for Iranian.
- Dutch languageIn 1925, South Africa legally declared that the word Dutch includes Afrikaans.
- Kazakh languageKazakh has been written in three completely different alphabets within a single century.
- Korean languageKorean's alphabet was mocked by nobles for being too easy to learn.
- Odia languageA 19th-century teacher argued that Odia was not a language at all. He wanted every Odia-language school closed.
- Old FrisianForeigners once called the North Sea the Frisian Sea. Old Frisian was the language of those sea traders.
- Japanese languageModern Japanese is written with three systems at once. Kanji came from China, and hiragana grew from Man'yogana.
- HindiIn 2010, the Gujarat High Court said Hindi is not India's national language. The constitution never names one.
- Tamil languageThe English word rice traces back to Tamil. It passed through Hebrew and Greek on its way.
- Persian languageMarco Polo used Persian at Kublai Khan's court in China. It was the only non-European language he used there.
- Basque languageBasque is the only language isolate left in Europe. It has no known relatives, and roughly 806,000 people speak it.
- LatinVatican City has the world's only cash machine that gives instructions in Latin.
- SanskritScholar Biderman says Sanskrit's perfection is about sound, not meaning. Its sages shaped it by listening.