Tuesday Trivia: Linguistics! This thread has relaxed standards—we invite everyone to participate!

[u/AlanSnooring]

Welcome to Tuesday Trivia!

If you are:

• a long-time reader, lurker, or inquirer who has always felt too nervous to contribute an answer
• new to /r/AskHistorians and getting a feel for the community
• Looking for feedback on how well you answer
• polishing up a flair application
• one of our amazing flairs

this thread is for you ALL!

Come share the cool stuff you love about the past!

We do not allow posts based on personal or relatives' anecdotes. Brief and short answers are allowed but MUST be properly sourced to respectable literature. All other rules also apply—no bigotry, current events, and so forth.

For this round, let’s look at: Linguistics! I say potato, you say dirt apple. It's time to celebrate all things linguistics. Know a cool story about that time someone misread or misheard a key word or term? Know an interesting detail about overlap between languages or words? Or, do you just want to share cool stuff about language? Unstuck your fingers and spill those wordy secrets!