Page 36 - Language Facts

The word karaoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese.

Karaoke comes from the Japanese words "kara," meaning empty, and ?kesutora, which is a Japanese word for orchestra.
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"Mrs." is actually an abbreviation for the word "mistress."

"Mistress" is the feminine form of "mister," which originally meant "master." Over the years people garbled the name for the married female, and the word "mistress" took on the meaning of an illicit lover, something far different than its original connotation. Therefore, married women ceased to spell out the full word, leaving "Mrs." as the far more respectable abbreviation!
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There are many different sign languages.

In America, the most common language for deaf people is American Sign Language. In fact, it's the fourth most commonly used language in the United States!

Despite the fact that English is spoken in both the United States and the United Kingdom (accents and regional dialects aside) there is an entirely different sign language in the UK from the sign language used in the United States. British Sign Language (BSL) is notably different than American Sign Language (ASL). There's also a French Sign Language (FSL). There is no universal sign language, and different countries or even different regions have their own version of sign language. ASL is also expressed differently in different parts of the country, giving the language as much of a variety as one would expect from any spoken language.

ASL is also completely separate from English. It has entirely different rules for grammar, punctuation, and sentence order.

Check out this link if you would like to learn more about American Sign Language.

There is a language that only one person speaks.

The Yaghan people of Chile are the world's southernmost indigenous culture, but they are slowly dying. A town on the southernmost tip of South America, Puerto Williams, is home to the last 70 Yaghan descendants - a tribe that has existed for at least 6,000 years! Today 78-year-old Cristina Calderón is both the only pureblooded descendant of the Yaghan people and the last remaining speaker of the Yaghan language! Chile's National Council for Culture and the Arts is attempting to preserve this language and way of life by beginning new initiatives to promote Yaghan culture within the community.

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"A" is the only vowel that is not on the top row of the keyboard.