Jon Pretty

The world's languages can be grouped into those which call oranges oranges, those which call oranges apples and those which call oranges Portugals.

Of those languages which call oranges oranges, a guest consonant often makes a cameo appearance at the start: N in Spanish (naranja), L in Portuguese (laranja) and T in Catalan (taronja), while Italian (arancia) does without.

It's ironic that they're called "portugals" in Turkey, because in Portugal a turkey is called a peru, though at least in Peru a turkey is called a turkey. Elsewhere (e.g. Poland, France), a turkey is called an Indian. Basically nobody knows where the bird came from.

If you need another funny unneeded linguistic fact, I've just learned that Polish "słoń", an elephant, comes from Turkish "aslan", a lion. They're both big animals from Africa which Slavic people have never seen. Oh, and Polish "wielbłąd", a camel, comes from "olifant"/elephant.