..."Long may your big jib draw" is a phrase used in Newfoundland to wish someone luck.   Also, if you "have something under your pinny" in Canada's most easterly province, you're pregnant.  In one of my Back Tracker novels, a unique Newfoundland phrase proved a valuable clue to my heroine.

. . .'Kugluktuk' [a village on the Arctic Ocean which was once called 'Coppermine'] is a mistranslation of the Inuinnaqtun word, Qurluktuk: "the place of moving water".  'Kugluktuk' means 'two astonished people.' 

The heroine in my Back Tracker novels spent her preschool years in Canada's arctic.

. . .crorect seplilng is not all taht ipmrotnat?  Researchers have found that as long as all the letters of a word are there and the first and last letters are in the correct place, the order of the rest of letters doesn't adversely affect a person's ability to read the word.  Try tllenig taht to yuor etidor!

. . .in South Korea, tipping is considered an insult?  This tidbit is just one of the many interesting facets of South Korea's rich culture.  In my adult crime novel, 'Noraebang', South Korea's landscape, history, and social norms provide a colourful backdrop to the intense drama.

. . .although to the untrained Western eye, Korean writing looks similar to Chinese script, the written Korean language is actually phonetic--its characters are letters of its alphabet.  Korean words can be read by sounding them out like we do with English.  (Well, usually you can sound out English words.)  On the other hand, the written Chinese language is not phonetic.  The characters represent words and ideas, not the spoken sound of the words.