Wikipedia:Unusual articles/Language

Language[edit]

"Which këÿs för this heävy plästic müsïc?"

The Voynich manuscript is written in an undeciphered script.

-ussy	Yes, it means what you think it does.
2002 renaming of Turkmen months and days of week	For almost six years, the months and days of the week in the Turkmen language had their names changed at the order of Turkmenistan's despotic President for Life.
Académie de la Carpette anglaise	A satirical French organisation that awards prizes to "members of the French élite who distinguish themselves by relentlessly promoting the domination of the English language over the French language in France and in European institutions".
Antiqua–Fraktur dispute	A dispute over which typeface was more "German". At first, the Nazis were for Fraktur...
Apples and oranges	According to scholars, comparing the two may be easier than previously thought.
Belarusian Arabic alphabet	Turns out, a Slavic-based language can also be written in the Arabic script.
A Book from the Sky	A must-see for connoisseurs of gibberish.
Bouba/kiki effect	You instinctively know exactly which is which, no matter what language you speak.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo	A meaningful, grammatical construction that has inspired linguists to talk about bullying amongst Western New York's bison population.
The Chaos	The poem that mocks English spelling and pronunciation. Try to read it out loud!
Chinese characters of Empress Wu	Ever needed to be taken seriously so hard that you invented completely new characters and forced people to use them?
Chinese word for "crisis"	More notable among Americans than among the Chinese, apparently.
Codex Seraphinianus	A made-up enigmatic text released in 1981.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously	A sentence contrived by Noam Chomsky to demonstrate that a sentence can be grammatical yet nonsensical.
Comparative illusion	More people have researched these nonsensical sentences than I have. [sic]
Controversies about the word niggardly	How a simple word can cause so much controversy.
Crazy English	"Li Yang's unconventional method of teaching English includes screaming popular and random English phrases at a rapid pace and occasionally, involves hand movements in patterns that reflect the word's pronunciation."
Cryptophasia	The secret language of identical twins, also called idioglossia.
Disambiguation (disambiguation)	Sometimes people do dumb things.
Dord	A nonexistent English word, supposedly meaning "density", which was listed in the second edition of Webster's New International Dictionary from 1935 to 1939.
The Dozens	A usually good-natured African American game in which two competitors, usually male, exchange trash-talk until one has no comeback.
Duck test	A humorous abductive reasoning test based on the activities of a duck.
English as She Is Spoke	A 19th century Portuguese-English phrasebook that became legendary for its overtly literal and inaccurate translations.
Engrish	Attempts by East Asian people – especially the Japanese – to construct English words and phrases.
Eskimo words for snow	The claim that Eskimo languages have an unusually large number of words for "snow".
Etaoin shrdlu	Cryptic echoes from the days of hot metal typesetting.
Faggin–Nazzi alphabet	What? That's its real name. What did you think it was about?
Faux Cyrillic	Give text some of that Яussiaи flavour.
Fictitious entry	The content may be fictitious, but the entry is a fact.
Fnord	Deliberately misleading, irrelevant or false information meant to suggest conspiracy. A popular word among Discordians.
Garden-path sentence	A sentence that doesn't seem grammatically correct, but that's because it tricks you into thinking the verb isn't where it is. It's very easy to catch yourself doing double takes when reading this article.
Ghoti	As good an argument as any for English-language spelling reform.
Glossary of Wobbly terms	Would you see the beanmaster fry a couple eggs on the banjo?
Hamburgevons	Literally all you need to know if a typeface is any good.
Hopi time controversy	A long-lived academic debate about the concept of time in the Hopi language.
How now brown cow	A way to greet those well-versed in rhetoric.
Hyphen War	A dash between communism and independence.
Ingressive sound	In many languages and dialects around the world, a loud inhalation means "yes".
Inherently funny word	Some influential comedians have long regarded certain words in the English language as humorous because of their sound or resemblance to other words. Poodle, wankel, ni...
Intentionally blank page	The self-refuting meta-reference that is "This page intentionally left blank".
Irony punctuation	Is your irony too subtle?
Irreversible binomial	Or, why it's fish and chips and not chips and fish.
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher	Repetition gone wrong.
Latin profanity	Latin for the profane.
Law of holes	If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!
La plume de ma tante (phrase)	One of the first phrases stereotypicaly learned in French, and one of the least likely to ever actually be used.
Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den	A 92-character poem written in Classical Chinese, in which every syllable has the sound "shi" (in different tones) when read in modern Mandarin Chinese.
List of common false etymologies of English words	Believe it or not, "crap" did not originate from Thomas Crapper.
List of English words containing Q not followed by U	A Scrabbler's dream article.
List of English words without rhymes	Does anything rhyme with orange? Or silver?
List of ethnic slurs	Ever wondered why they got so angry at you?
List of proposed etymologies of OK	There's more than you think, OK?
List of shorthand systems	Featuring Gregg, Pitman, and other quickly-written but only-theoretically-readable scripts.
Longest word in English	Floccinaucinihilipilification, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and other contenders.
Mamihlapinatapai	The Guinness World Record holder for the "most succinct word".
Martian language	Chinese language + Internet = new language.
Maternal insult	What is this article about? Your mom!
May you live in interesting times	The worst curse you can put on someone. Probably not Chinese in origin.
Metal umlaut	Gïvë thë lögö för ÿöür hëävÿ mëtäl bänd ä töügh Gërmänïc fëël.
My postillion has been struck by lightning	A perfectly normal thing to say, as recommended by 19th century multilingual phrasebooks.
Newton's flaming laser sword	Not an actual weapon, but a philosophical razor created by an Australian mathematician.
Nucular	Enough people have mispronounced nuclear that it's apparently a real word now.
Phaistos Disc	Ancient spirals of undeciphered hieroglyphs.
Placeholder name	You know, thingamajigs, doohickeys, whatchamacallits...
Pompatus	All Steve Miller's fault.
Potrzebie	A Polish word best known to American readers of MAD magazine.
Pronunciation of GIF	Remember when the internet spent most of 2014 arguing about this? Good times.
RAS syndrome	...which is itself an example of RAS.
Response to sneezing	Achoo! A great fortunate occurrence!
Robert Shields	You think you are hooked on recording every detail of your life...?
Rohonc Codex	A mysterious book found in Hungary that to this day remains unsolved.
Scientific wild-ass guess	Please excuse my SWAG.
Scots Wikipedia	What happens when an American man writes 23,000 articles in a language he has no idea how to speak?
Shavian alphabet	A new (well, 1960s) alphabet made exclusively for English.
Shibboleth	A type of slang used to identify an individual with a very specific region, usually with accompanied value judgments. Also, a funny word.
Shit happens	A statement of philosophical existentialism boiled down to two words.
Shm-reduplication	Ah, Wikipedia-shmikipedia.
Spelling of Shakespeare's name	What is the correct spelling of the famous English playwright?
Taito	A kanji with 84 strokes, the most for any CJK character by some distance.
Talk to the hand	...'cause the face ain't listening.
Tenevil	Chukchi man who independently created his own writing system for the Chukchi language.
Thagomizer	The word referring to those spikes on the tails of Stegosauria originated from the same guy that made "Cow tools".
That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is	Punctuation matters, people.
The Moon is made of green cheese	Is it really made out of cheese?
There is no sex in the USSR	Did you know that?
Thinking about the immortality of the crab	A colorful Spanish idiom for daydreaming; try using this one if your teacher notices you becoming inattentive in class.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana	Another example of syntactic ambiguity.
Toynbee tiles	Tiles found embedded in asphalt, usually sporting cryptic messages.
Tsundoku	Buy a book and then don't read it.
Unknown unknowns	Things that we don't know we don't know, as immortalised by Donald Rumsfeld.
Voynich manuscript	An undeciphered illustrated book written six hundred or so years ago by an anonymous author using an unidentified alphabet.
Wine-dark sea	Homer's epithet that raises a theory that Greeks of Homer's time were color blind.
Yan tan tethera	The proper, Brythonic way to count sheep oop North.
Zhemao hoaxes	An editor on Chinese Wikipedia created over 200 articles about fake Russian history, making it one of the largest hoaxes on Wikipedia.
Zzxjoanw	A fictional word that really confused linguists.

Specific languages, dialects, and pidgins[edit]

Abercraf English	How an all-new variety of English has developed in a single Welsh village since World War II.
Algonquian–Basque pidgin	The linguistic fruit of the travels of Basque whalers.
Basque–Icelandic pidgin	The linguistic fruit of the travels of Basque whalers.
Anāl language	Its phonemic inventory, sadly, doesn't include the voiced anal fricative.
Andalusian language movement	A group of people have attempted to promote Andalusian Spanish as a distinct language. They have successfully created an Andalusian version of Minecraft.
Antarctic English	Not spoken by penguins.
Arcaicam Esperantom	How do you make things look "old" in a constructed language? By inventing a new one!
Boontling	Bet it seems pretty crazeek to harp boont to a kimmie Brightlighter like you, huh?
Broome Pearling Lugger Pidgin	A pidgin formed in 20th century Western Australia from Aboriginal Australian English, Japanese, and Kupang Malay to facilitate communication between the variety of groups working on pearling boats in the Kimberley region.
Cia-Cia	A language in Indonesia that came to use the Korean script.
DoggoLingo	Hoomanz wrote thiz cool article about mai language!
Dravido-Korean languages	A discarded and mostly-forgotten hypothesis that Korean and the Dravidian languages of Southern India made up a single language family, despite being thousands of kilometres apart and sharing very little common history.
E-Prime	A form of English without the verb 'to be'.
High Tider	Some people in rural coastal areas of North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland still speak a dialect derived from the English spoken over 300 years ago.
Ithkuil	Try learning this in a weekend!
Jamaican Maroon Spirit Possession Language	A creole language with Akan vocabulary that is spoken by Jamaican Maroons in rituals involving spiritual possession.
Kebabnorsk	The delicious-sounding ethnolect prevalent in multi-ethnic Oslo.
Lojban	A constructed language based on predicate logic.
Mediterranean Lingua Franca	The original lingua franca. Spoken from the 11th to the 19th centuries with substratum from Venetian, Genoese, Catalan, Occitan, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Arabic, Berber, Greek, Sicilian, Galician, and many more.
Nicaraguan Sign Language	In the 1980s, Nicaragua's first ever school for the deaf was opened, but rather than teaching them a sign language, the teachers tried teaching them to lip-read Spanish. This failed, and instead the children developed their own sign language from scratch, much to the interest of the world's linguists.
Pandanus language	Elaborate avoidance languages used by peoples of the New Guinea Highlands while foraging for screwpine nuts due to the belief that normal speech carries phrases and words that are unhealthy and will stunt the growth of the nuts.
Pirahã language	A language spoken by the Amazonian Pirahã people, and an example of a language that can be whistled. The subject of controversial claims that it proves the theory of linguistic relativity.
Plains Indian Sign Language	Despite (mostly) not being deaf, the various indigenous peoples of the North American Plains developed a sign language to use as their common form of communication with each other, rather than a lingua franca or creole language.
Proto-Human language	The (completely hypothetical) genetic ancestor to all the world's languages.
Russenorsk	A Slavic-Scandinavian pidgin that lasted only 150 years.
Silbo Gomero	The inhabitants of La Gomera of the Canary Islands communicate across valleys by whistling in Spanish.
Solresol	A constructed language based around musical notes.
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh	The native name of the indigenous Squamish language of British Columbia, which uses the number 7 as a letter.
Toki Pona	The opposite of the previously mentioned Ithkuil. Inspired by minimalism and Taoist philosophy, this constructed language has only 137 regularly used words.
Ubykh language	A language formerly spoken until 1992 by the Ubykh tribe of Circassians. The record-holder for most consonants of any non-click language, with 84 phonemic consonants, yet only 2 distinct vowels.
Wenzhounese	And you thought Mandarin was hard? A Chinese dialect nicknamed "the devil's language" for its extreme divergence and difficulty.
ǃXóõ	A click language with 122 consonants spoken by groups of San people in Namibia and Botswana.
Yerkish	An artificial language developed for use by non-human primates.

Unusual names[edit]

See Nominative determinism for the idea that people gravitate toward careers that fit their names, e.g. urologists named Splat and Weedon.

Amandagamani Abhaya of Anuradhapura	A king of Anuradhapura whose name has way too many As for me to be comfortable with.
Arses of Persia	Unfortunately, 4th century BC Persian rulers were unable to predict modern profanity.
Dick Assman	What? He was a celebrity for four months!
Harry Baals	Mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1950s and had a really unfortunate name. Almost immortalized in the Harry Baals Government Center, but it ended up being named Citizens Square instead.
C. H. D. Buys Ballot	No evidence of electoral fraud by the chairman of a precursor to the World Meteorological Organization.
Praise-God Barebone	Christened Unless-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone; not to be confused with his son Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon.
Bishop Bishop (disambiguation)	There have been four different bishops named Bishop in England.
Dick Bong	The most successful American fighter pilot's legal name was Richard, but he only ever went by the name "Dick Bong".
Cesar Chavez	Formerly Scott Fistler, this right-wing, pro-business politician changed his name to match the Hispanic left‑wing labor activist in an attempt to get more votes.
Thursday October Christian I	The son of Fletcher Christian, leader of the mutiny on the Bounty.
Deportivo Wanka	An unfortunately named Peruvian football team whose strips are remarkably popular in Britain.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft	An officials' association in pre-war Vienna, Austria, of a shipping company for transporting passengers and cargo on the Danube.
Preserved Fish	A historical New York City shipping merchant.
FM-2030	A transhumanist philosopher changed his name to this, inspired by his predictions for the year 2030.
Goodspaceguy	Perennial political candidate in the Seattle area of the United States who legally changed his name to align with his passion for space colonization.
Gregor Fučka	A Slovenian-born Italian basketball player with another socially problematic last name.
Guy Standing	Observed sitting in the infobox photo.
John le Fucker	His surname probably didn't mean what you think it might mean.
Argel Fucks	A Brazilian footballer with a socially problematic last name. An unforgettable newspaper headline once declared "Fucks Off to Benfica".
Jakob Fugger	One of the richest men in history, with another quite unfortunate surname.
States Rights Gist	A Confederate general during the American Civil War.
John B. Goodenough	Being good enough, this guy invented random access memory and the lithium-ion battery.
Curtis Hidden Page	An American writer whose middle and last names accidentally predicted the Internet, and the countless pages on it that could only be accessed by typing their URLs in the URL bar manually.
Ima Hogg	American society leader, philanthropist, patron and collector of the arts, and one of the most respected women in Texas during the 20th century.
Huang Hong-cheng, Ah Cheng from Taiwan, World’s Greatest Man, God of Wealth, and President	A performance artist who took full advantage of Taiwan's naming law.
Christmas Humphreys	A British judge, named after the festival celebrating the birth of Christ, who helped make Buddhism popular in the UK.
Tiny Kox	A Dutch politician.
Jennifer 8. Lee	A former New York Times reporter whose middle name is the number eight. And you thought Harry S. Truman had an exceptional middle name...
List of examples of Stigler's law	Bode didn't discover Bode's Law, and Pascal didn't discover Pascal's Triangle.
Henry Lizardlover	Yes, he appreciates reptiles.
Seán Dublin Bay Rockall Loftus	An Irish politician who changed his name to emphasize political affiliations.
Mannanafnanefnd	A committee in Iceland that determines whether a name is suitable for integration into the Icelandic language. Apparently voted yes about themselves.
Adolf Lu Hitler Marak	This Indian politician does not dispraise his parents' questionable name choice.
Mister Mxyzptlk	Sometimes called Mxy, a fictional impish character who appears in DC Comics' Superman comic books.
Names of Soviet origin	In the wake of the Russian Revolution, there was a craze for parents giving names of overtly revolutionary or Soviet inspiration. Examples include "Vladlen" (short for Vladimir Lenin), "Revmir" ("Revolution of the world"), "Elmira" (electrification of the world), "Barrikad" (barricade) and "Geliy" (helium).
Naming law in Sweden	An odd Swedish law regulating children's names, which has led to disgruntled parents submitting names such as Brfxxccxxmnpcccclllmmnprxvclmnckssqlbb11116, A (both pronounced "Albin"), and Metallica.
Neville Neville	The father of English footballers Phil Neville and Gary Neville.
Metta World Peace	An NBA player who wants to promote World Peace and has a reputation for on-court brawls.
Pro-Life	A perennial political candidate with strongly held views.
Public Universal Friend	An 18th century Quaker who died, and was then revived, becoming an evangelist, gaining this unusual name, and becoming one of the earliest instances in recorded history of a person identifying as genderless.
Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz	And that's the short title of this German beef labelling law.
Tokyo Sexwale	Despite not being Japanese or a sperm whale, he has control over the global diamond industry.
Sjokz	Commentator with an equally unpronounceable real name (Eefje Depoortere). Watch out! Eep!
Mansfield Smith-Cumming	The first head of MI6, whose name became appropriate as he promoted the use of semen as invisible ink.
M. K. Stalin	What if old Joe was Tamil?
Téa	This name is surprisingly French and not English.
Richard Plantagenet Campbell Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos	A warning to us all about taking double-barrelled surnames too far...
Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraudatifilius Tollemache-Tollemache de Orellana Plantagenet Tollemache-Tollemache	Somehow, it's not even the longest or most extravagant name among his family.
Tonibler	A name given in Kosovo in honor of a certain British politician.
Turnipseed	Only the most hardcore turnip farmers have this name!
Hubert Blaine Wolfeschlegelsteinhausenbergerdorff Sr.	The longest name ever given. Note: the page title is only the short form.
Marijuana Pepsi Vandyck	Educational professional who earned her Ph.D. with a dissertation on uncommon Black names in the classroom.
Osama Vinladen	Brother to the equally concerning Sadam Huseín and Georgia Bush.
Vladimiro Lenin Ilich Montesinos	Did you know that Russian revolutionary and leader of the Bolsheviks Vladimir Lenin was a CIA asset?