The Icelandic word for a hangover, timburmenn, means ‘carpenters’.

The Japanese word bushusuru means ‘to vomit in public’ - as President George Bush Sr did on a state visit to Japan in 1992.

The German word kummerspeck means ‘excess weight gained through comfort eating’. It literally means ‘grief-bacon’.

The Cambodian alphabet has 72 letters.

In Urdu, the same word, kal, is used to mean both ‘tomorrow’ and ‘yesterday’

Check-mate derives from shah-mat, the Arabic for ‘the king is dead’.

A koku is a Japanese measurement equal to approximately 278 litres - or the quantity of rice required to feed a person for one year.

The French equivalent of LOL is MDR. It stands for mort de

rire, or “dead with laughing”. In Thai, the equivalent is ‘555’, hâa, ‘ha-ha-ha’.

25.000 people in Argentina speak Welsh. A Welsh colony known as Y Whadfa was establised in the Chubut province of southern Argentina in 1865. After a ship of 153 Welsh emigrants landed on the Patagonian coast and today about 50.000 Chubut people (1 in 11) have Welsh ancestry.

30% of the English language is derived from French.

Whisky derives from a Gaelic word, uisgebeatha, meaning ‘water of life’.

Voda means ‘little water’ in Russian.

The German name for the @ sign means ‘spider monkey’ (Klammeraffe). Italian: la chiocciola (the snail), Greek: papaki (duckling); Denmark and sweden snabel-a (elephant trunk A); Finland kissanhäntä, cat’s tail. Czech and Slovak: zavináč a local pickled rollmop herring.