The universal language

"OK" is the most frequently spoken word on the planet, and these 9 follow

Learning languages is hard. But, fortunately, some terms rooted in daily universal experiences don't change much when crossing borders. If you say "mama, "papa," "taxi," or "banana," anywhere in the world, they’ll recognize those nouns immediately —even if the context provided is entirely blurry. The question is: Why did these words barely change over time and across different languages? Let’s explore the stories behind the most spoken words on the planet.

"OK" is the most spoken word on the planet. And it started as a typo joke. In 1839, the initials "O.K." were first published in the Boston Morning Post, meant as an abbreviation for "oll korrect" — a popular slang misspelling of "all correct."

Following that gag, politics intervened. In 1840, President Martin Van Buren's reelection supporters formed "O.K. Clubs" across the country, since Van Buren was nicknamed "Old Kinderhook" after his hometown in upstate New York. From there, telegraphs carried it coast to coast, and eventually it spread from North America all the way to the Moon, where Buzz Aldrin spoke it after the Apollo 11 landing.

Is it a real word? According to science, it is. In 2013, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics investigated "huh?" in naturally occurring conversations across ten languages and presented evidence for two claims. One, the term is universal. Two, it is genuinely a word.

They later expanded the study to 31 spoken languages from around the world and found that all of them have a word with a nearly identical sound and function as the English "huh?" With all its nuances and differences, most human languages on Earth independently arrived at similar rising syllables for not understanding something in conversation.

Why do unrelated languages, spoken by people who never met, use almost identical words for "mother" and "father"? In Swahili: mama. In Polish: mama. In Mandarin Chinese: māma. In Quechua, spoken in the Andes of South America: mama. This mystery puzzled linguists for generations.

This isn’t a case of cognates (words borrowed from one language to another). The answer here lies in babies: "mama" and "papa" are among the easiest sounds to produce, because they combine bilabial consonants and open vowels. "Mmm" is often the first consonant babies experiment with.

The term "hello" had floated around English since the 1820s, mainly as a shout to get someone’s attention, like "hey" or "oi." But it was barely more than that before telephones existed.

Then, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, and it was time to decide what callers should say when they picked up. Bell himself suggested the traditional nautical hail, "Ahoy." It was Thomas Edison who suggested "Hello!" in a letter dated 1877. By 1889, telephone operators had become widely known as "hello-girls." By then, the greeting had jumped to everyday conversation, and eventually every language on Earth picked up a version of it.

It is said that "Coca-Cola" is one of the most recognizable terms on the entire planet, much like the word "OK." This makes sense: the soft drink is sold in more than 200 countries. The name wasn’t the result of a marketing team or a focus group. It was coined in 1886 by the company’s bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, who derived it from the drink's two original ingredients: coca leaf and kola nut.

The drink was invented in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1886 by Dr. John S. Pemberton, who originally marketed it as a medicinal tonic. Today, approximately 1.9 billion servings of Coca-Cola beverages are consumed each day, so wherever in the world you are, the brand needs absolutely no introduction.

The word "coffee" has traveled far. Its story starts in the Ethiopian highlands with a by-now popular legend that depicts a 9th-century goat herder who noticed his goats wouldn’t sleep after eating berries from a certain bush. Thus, the idea of the drink made from those berries spread in Ethiopia.

From there, it moved to Yemen, where it was documented in a 15th-century text as a drink made from roasted coffee beans. It was assigned the Arabic word qahwa, which traveled with the drink. The product was traded by the Ottomans, who influenced several other languages, and from it derived the Italian caffè, the Dutch koffie, and the French café. So, the term has mutated slightly in each language, but it remains similar enough to identify it easily all over the world.

Every night, hundreds of millions of people all over the world put on a Persian garment with a Persian name. The word "pajamas" comes from the Persian pay-jāma, a compound of pay (foot or leg) and jāma (garment). In 15th-century Persia, it referred to loose trousers worn by men and women for comfort, and the term entered English in the 18th century when British colonists encountered the garment in India.

But the original pajamas were not sleepwear for a long time. Victorian high society adopted them as fashionable, exotic loungewear, and it was by the early 20th century that the two-piece sleeping suit had spread across the Western world. Today, most countries in the world have very similar names for this garment.

"Safari" is the name for a very specific activity. For many tongues in the world, the word itself conjures jeeps, binoculars, lions, and zebras.

But its original meaning was distant from the current one. It comes from the Arabic safara, which means "to travel." In Swahili, safari simply means any kind of journey, not just a wildlife expedition. For the English language, it was first recorded by explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1859. British colonists in East Africa understood the word to apply to hunting expeditions, and, by the middle of the 20th century, Hollywood had cemented its modern image with films romanticizing the African bush.

Today, Apple’s decision to name its search engine "Safari" brings the term closer to its original meaning than to the one related to wildlife exploration.

Banana is one of the most consumed fruits on Earth, and its name has traveled with it. The word "banana" first appeared in English in the 1590s, borrowed by Spanish or Portuguese explorers from a West African word, possibly from the Wolof language, spoken in what is today Senegal and Gambia.

Most historians sustain that Africans began harvesting the fruit at least 4,500 years ago. When Portuguese and Spanish ships began trading across the world in the 15th and 16th centuries, they encountered the fruit, borrowed its African name, and carried both across the Atlantic. Today, the word sounds remarkably similar in many languages: banana in English, Spanish, Italian, and German; banane in French; 바나나 (banana) in Korean.

From Buenos Aires to Bangkok, you can step off a plane having never spoken a word of the local language, hold out your hand, and say one word: "Taxi." You will get the exact same thing. But the story of this two-syllable word is a tangle of countries and languages.

The original word was "taximeter," coined by German inventor Friedrich W. G. Bruhn in 1891. This was a device that measured the fare by distance. It was the French who shortened taximètre to taxi. A company imported them to New York under the market name "Taxicab" and decided to paint them yellow, since it was the most visible color. From there, both the short name and the iconic color stuck. Today, it is a symbol universally shared that you’ll find in every major city.

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10 Hilarious Travel Mishaps That Went Viral

Image: Erik Odiin

Part of the fun of being a tourist is that everything is kind of new. And more often than not, this means that traveling abroad is filled with little moments of excitement and unpredictability. But sometimes, these unexpected twists can lead to situations so bizarre that they end up making headlines worldwide.

From misplaced pets to mistaken destinations, here are 10 travel blunders that had the world laughing along.

Image: Patrick Hendry

Even pets can have unexpected adventures. Bluebell, a family's pet pup, found itself on an unintentional journey to Saudi Arabia after being mistakenly placed on a flight to Riyadh instead of San Francisco. When the worried family contacted the airline, they apologized and told them what had happened. Luckily, the furry traveler arrived unharmed and was reunited with its owners as quickly as possible.

Image: Gerrie van der Walt

If the perspective of being trapped inside a normal public restroom for any length of time is already unpleasant, imagine being trapped for almost the entirety of a two-hour flight inside an airplane bathroom! That's precisely what happened to an unfortunate passenger during a trip from Mumbai to Bengaluru on a SpiceJet Airlines flight in India. Despite efforts from the flight crew and fellow travelers, he remained trapped until the plane landed at its destination and a team of engineers could unlock the stubborn door.

Image: Alvaro Reyes

Three tourists in Australia relied a bit too much on their GPS when attempting to drive to North Stradbroke Island. Failing to account for the fact that the island is… well, surrounded by water, the GPS traced a course that led them directly into the sea. Eventually, they found themselves stuck in mud and water, and were forced to abandon their vehicle. Lesson learned: never trust a machine blindly!

Image: Andre Mouton

In 2014, during a visit to Bali, a tourist experienced an unexpected encounter with a mischievous monkey. While busy feeding other animals, his GoPro was stolen by a cunning primate who, in a matter of seconds, snatched it and ran away into the forest. Fortunately, a local woman intervened, making a "deal" with the monkey by offering fruits in exchange for the return of the expensive equipment. But when the tourist finally recovered his camera, he was delighted to find that the monkey had filmed himself during the whole ordeal, in true "selfie" fashion.

Image: Jerry Zhang

A few years ago, a viral story claimed that an airport in Salzburg, Austria, had a dedicated help desk for people who mistook the tranquil alpine destination with Australia. As funny as it sounds, the story turned out to be fake - but that doesn’t mean similar occurrences are completely unheard of. Far from it, from soccer fans ending up in the wrong country for a match to travelers mistakenly flying to Grenada instead of Granada, mix-ups in destinations are more common than you'd think. Remember: always double-check your travel plans! Otherwise, you might end up far, far away from your intended destination.

Image: Karl-Heinz Müller

In 2019, diver Rainer Schimpf had a whale of a tale to tell after being briefly swallowed whole by a huge Bryde's whale off the coast of South Africa. Confusing him for some tasty fish, the enormous creature opened its mouth and took Schimpf into its massive jaws. Luckily, the animal quickly realized he was no ordinary fish and spat him out. The man managed to escape unscathed from the strange ordeal, but his story quickly became viral, earning him the nickname of a modern-day Jonah.

Image: James Eades

A Texan grandma's holiday photo op turned into a media sensation when she was swept out to sea while posing on an iceberg throne in Iceland. While her son was taking a picture of her, the chunk of ice she was sitting on suddenly separated from the shore, sweeping her and the block of ice into the freezing sea. Fortunately, the coast guard quickly launched a rescue operation, and she was returned safely to shore.

Image: JESHOOTS.COM

You might assume that once you've passed through the departure gate, missing a flight would be impossible. However, easyJet made headlines when they overlooked 29 passengers trapped between security doors and the gangway. Days later, the company found themselves in the news again, this time dealing with a drunken passenger causing chaos in the nude. It's safe to say it was a turbulent week for them.

Image: David Clode

A Scottish woman got the surprise of her life when she found a 24-inch-long spotted python in her luggage after a trip from Australia to Scotland. Amazingly, the snake had managed to hitch a ride unnoticed during the 11,200-mile-long and had even begun to hibernate in its makeshift shelter within one of the woman's shoes. Fortunately, the clueless reptile was taken unharmed to a wildlife sanctuary. So, if you are planning a trip to the Down Under, remember to check your boots before coming home!

Image: Jan Huber

Even with careful planning, sometimes things take an unexpected turn. Such was the plight of passengers aboard a British Airways flight destined for Dusseldorf in 2019, only to find themselves landing in Edinburgh due to a crew error. Mid-flight, some passengers noticed something was amiss, but the plane nonetheless continued its journey, leading to their bewildered arrival in Scotland instead of Germany. Apparently, the pilots were given incorrect flight details and only found out their mistake when confronted by the angry passengers upon landing.