20 facts about English

Every language has special qualities. That’s maybe the reason why we love learning different languages. But what do we really know about the English language?

20 facts about English

1) One of the shortest and also oldest words is “I”.

2) There are panagram sentences in English which means that the sentence contains every letter in the aplphabet. One of theses sentences is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

3) English is the official language of over 60 countries.

4) The English language is one of the happiest languages in the world.

5) The longest word in English is “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” which is a type of lung disease.

6) About 90 % of English text consits of just 1000 words.

7) The words “month”, “silver”, “purple” and orange” don’t rhyme with another word.

8) The shortest complete sentence in English is “I am”.

9) English is the language of the air.

10) The most common adjective which is used in English is “good”. The most common noun is “time”.

11) The word “set” is the word with the highest number of definitions.

12) Shakespear invented many words, for example “birthplace”, “undress” or “torture”.

13) The most common words in English are “I” and “you”.

14) English has ghost words which are words without a meaning.

15) English is a living language, so every two hours a new word is added to the dictionary.

16) In the US you can find 24 different dialects of English.

17) The word “goodbye” comes from an Old English phrase meaning “god be with you”.

18) The original name for butterfly was “flutterby”.

19) About 11 % of the entire English language is just the letter E.

20) 25 % of the world’s population speaks at least some English.



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