If you speak Achuar Chicham, you call August “Wampuash,” switch to Spanish for numbers greater than four, and cover your mouth and avoid eye contact when conversing with visitors. Pingelapese? Chances are uncommonly good that you see everything in black and white.

Do you go b-b-b-b-b-b-b! when you’re cold? Some languages count that sound, the bilabial trill, in their regular inventory. Navava, heard in four villages on ⁠Vanuatu’s Malakula Island, employs b-b-b-b-b-b-b for “until,” with the length of the trill indicating how long the wait.

Aymara speakers, Bolivian president and trade unionist Evo Morales among them, see the past as something in front of them and the future, behind. Taki taki, spoken in Suriname, gets by with a total vocabulary of 340 words.

Looking to pick up invaluable pointers?

Cuisine: “Don’t show butter to a Chinese; don’t show vegetables to a Y⁠ugur.” (Yugur)

Home economics: “Gambling today, selling clothes tomorrow.” (Zhuang)

Acculturation: “When you ride in a Chechen cart, sing a Chechen song; when you ride in a Kumyk cart, sing a Kumyk song.” (Chechen)

Teamwork: “When webs of spiders join together, they trap a lion.” (Luo)

Surprising, thought-provoking, hypnotically engaging. Guaranteed.

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