• Christian Kølle introduced the feminine grammatical gender in Norway in an anonymous work released in 1785?

Facts on topics related to Grammatical gender

French language

• Alabama lawyer and Republican Party pioneer John Grenier of Birmingham was self-taught in four foreign languages: French, Spanish, German, and modern Greek?
• Soviet literature declared Russian the "world language of internationalism", denouncing French as the "language of fancy courtiers" and English as the "jargon of traders"?
• "Comme Ci, Comme Ça" was performed in French at the Eurovision Song Contest 2007, despite being the Cypriot entry?
• Allen Bares, a former member of the Louisiana State Legislature, was awarded the Medal of Merit by France for promotion of the French language?
• Avenue Charles de Gaulle in N'Djamena is a rare street in Chad to have retained its French name despite President François Tombalbaye's Authenticité Africanization program?
• charcuterie, derived from the French words for flesh (chair) and cooked (cuit), is the branch of cooking devoted to prepared meat products primarily sourced from pork?
• HMS Fifi, a German warship captured and added to the Royal Navy during the First World War, was named to mean 'tweet-tweet' in French?
• Joe M. Rodgers, who spent six hours a day for four months learning French after being named U.S. Ambassador to France, later became CEO of language school operator Berlitz International?
• Merten de Keyser printed the first complete French and English Bibles in Antwerp?
• Reinald, a 13th century Cistercian monk and Bishop of Ross, was nicknamed Macer, French for "skinny"?

German language

• Alabama lawyer and Republican Party pioneer John Grenier of Birmingham was self-taught in four foreign languages: French, Spanish, German, and modern Greek?
• MEP Ryszard Czarnecki thought fellow Polish MEP Róża Gräfin von Thun und Hohenstein might harm the Civic Platform in the 2009 elections because of her German-sounding name?
• Leo Tolstoy's play The Living Corpse played in New York City in both Yiddish (1911) and German (1916) before it was ever presented there in English (1918)?
• Mark Twain wrote the essay "The Awful German Language" to express his frustrations when learning German?
• Russian historian and scientist Vladimir N. Beneshevich was arrested on charges of spying for Germany and executed because one of his books was translated into German in 1937?
• Eilhart von Oberge's German poem Tristrant, dating to the late 12th century, is the earliest complete version of the Tristan and Iseult legend in any language?
• Quirinus Kuhlmann, a German poet who called himself "son of the Son of God", was denounced as theologically and politically dangerous, and burnt at the stake for heresy in Moscow in 1689?
• Sabine Ehrenfeld, the Overstock.com spokesmodel, is fluent in German, French, English, and Italian and that she is an experienced pilot and equestrian?
• although Kristijonas Donelaitis wrote the poem The Seasons in Lithuanian, it was first published in its German translation in 1818?
• as a Seattle School Board member during World War I, German-born Nathan Eckstein bowed to pressure to drop German language classes in Seattle Public Schools?

Romanian language

• the Silesian-born scholar Heimann Hariton Tiktin, one of the founders of modern Romanian linguistics was initially destined to become a rabbi?
• the Wallachian poet Ion Heliade Rădulescu (pictured) advocated a radical transformation of the Romanian language on the basis of Italian neologisms?
• the villagers of the Romanian village of Bigar largely speak Czech rather than Romanian?

English language

• 16 of the 72 fiction authors with at least 100 million copies of their works in print did not write in English, and 16 of the 72 are women?
• 92% of students at West London's Villiers High School do not speak English as their first language?
• Andrew Carnegie (pictured) founded the Simplified Spelling Board in 1906, with the aim of making English the world language by addressing its difficult spelling?
• botanist Henry Lyte's Niewe Herball of 1578 was an English translation of the 1564 Cruydeboeck of Rembert Dodoens printed in Antwerp with the woodcuts of the original edition?
• children's book publisher Kane/Miller published the English language edition of Everyone Poops?
• Chilean Canadian writer Carmen Rodriguez publishes much of her work in both English and Spanish, and that she herself is responsible for their translation?
• Dutch linguist Herman Neubronner van der Tuuk published a Batak-Dutch dictionary to enable him to translate the Bible into Batak in 1861, and his posthumous trilingual Kawi-Balinese-Dutch dictionary was republished in English in 1971?
• Dutch rocker Wally Tax learned English by age 11 by working as a pimp for American sailors in the Port of Amsterdam?
• Edyta Górniak sang part of "To Nie Ja" in English at the dress rehearsal for the Eurovision Song Contest 1994, which almost caused the song to be disqualified?
• English once had a four-form yes and no system, employed by Shakespeare and others, instead of the two-form system that it has today?

Portuguese language

• Hindi, Bengali, and Portuguese have all recently been proposed as official languages of the United Nations?
• President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva recently launched TV Brasil Internacional, a Portuguese language television station aimed at 49 African nations?
• radio station KLBS broadcasts a Portuguese-language world music format to California's San Joaquin Valley?
• Quốc ngữ, the Vietnamese alphabet in general use today, was established by the 1651 trilingual Latin-Portuguese-Vietnamese dictionary Dictionarium Annamiticum Lusitanum et Latinum?
• the earliest Portuguese description of Malaysia, Tomé Pires's Suma Oriental, lay unpublished and presumed lost in an archive until 1944?