"Can You Ever Just be Whelmed?"

"I know you can be underwhelmed and you can be overwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?" - 10 Things I Hate About You

Recently while reading a book about languages and how they got to be the way they are I was reminded of the line above. Seriously, what is a whelm and how can you be over it?

From this reading I have learned a lot of interesting facts about the English language and a lot about other languages. It seems like more and more people are trying to learn and use English... although sometimes it doesn't sound how it should. For instance, in Tokyo there is a warning to motorists which states, "When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor." Another example is an announcement in a Yugoslavian hotel which says, "The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid. Turn to her straightaway." These little phrases humor me a lot. I'm not going to lie, the English language is very complex and so interesting phrases such as those above seem to be expected.
Some Fun Facts:
-There are now more students of English in China than there are people in the United States.
-About 200,000 English words are in common use compared to 184,000 German words and 100,000 french words.
-Many languages do not have words to distinguish house from home, man from gentleman, or mind from brain.
-English is the only language where a thesaurus is needed.
-Other languages have words that we don't such as in Scotland there is a word for the itchiness that overcomes the upper lip just before taking a sip of whiskey. The Eskimos have 50 words for types of snow but they don't have a word for just plain snow. The Italians have over 500 names for different types of macaroni... one of which is strozzapreti which means "strangled priests." New Zealand has 30 words for "dung."
-Some countries have phrases that may not be very kindly directed at other cultures. In Japanese the word for foreigner literally means "stinking of foreign hair." To the Czechs a Hungarian is "a pimple." Germans call cockroaches "Frenchmen." The French call lice "Spaniards." Italians call syphilis "the French disease." French and Italians call con games "American Swindle."
- It takes the Oxford English Dictionary 5 pages and almost 15,000 words to define the word "what."
-Different languages describe animal sounds differently. A dog goes oua-oua in France, bu-bu in Italy, mung-mung in Korea, and wan-wan in Japan.

Alright I'm sure whoever reads this is bored with my fascination of languages. Most of the information I got for this blog was from the book called "The Mother Tongue: English and how it got that way" by Bill Bryson. It may sound boring but it is really well written and quite intriguing if I do say so myself.