40 Interesting Facts about English Language

Interesting Facts about English

Interesting Facts about English

1. the word “English” is a corruption of the word “Anglish” — or, the “Language of the Angles”, one of the Germanic tribes that, along with the Saxons and the Jutes (collectively the “Anglo-Saxons”), invaded and colonised Britain from the 5th century after the Romans left. English actually originates from what is now called north west Germany and the Netherlands. If you want to know more about history of English language. 
2. 1/4 of the world’s population speaks at least some English. There are approximately 1.5 billion English speakers in the world.
3. That’s 20 percent of the world’s population!  List of countries by English-speaking population

4. English is the language of the air.This means that all pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English while flying, regardless of their origin.
5. English has more words than most languages.
6. There are currently about an estimated one million words in the English language.
7. Some English words look the same backward or forward.A palindrome is a word or phrase that’s spelled the same whether you read left-to-right (like normal) or right-to-left.An example word is madam.
8. Some English words repeat to make a new word.
A tautonym in linguistics is a word that consists of the same word twice. You might also hear this referred to as reduplication.
The common English word so-so is the perfect example of a tautonym. It means “just okay; fine.”
9. If you wrote out all the numbers (i.e. one, two, three…), you would not use the letter “b” until the word “billion.”
10. You can also spell every number up to “1000” without using the letter “a.”
11. Only 2 modern English words end in -gry.
12. There are only 2 modern English words that end in -gry:
        angry
        hungry


13. The longest English word that can be spelled without repeating any letters is ‘uncopyrightable’.
14. English uses the Latin alphabet.
15. You can blame confusing English spelling on a guy named William Caxton. a famous Englishman who started a printing press. He hired Flemish workers who simply spelled some words according to what they were used to.
16. The first English dictionary was written in 1755.
17. The oldest English word that is still in use is ‘town’.
18. The most common adjective used in English is ‘good’.
19. The most commonly used noun is ‘time’.
20. The word ‘set’ has the highest number of definitions.
21. Month, orange, silver, and purple do not rhyme with any other word.
22. Over 80% of the information stored on computers worldwide is in English.
23. English is the official language of 67 countries.

24. The most difficult tongue twister in the English language is “sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick”.
25. “I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
26. “Go!” is the shortest grammatically correct sentence in English.
27. ‘Pronunciation’ is the word which is most mispronounced in the English language!

Interesting Facts about English

28. The word ‘Goodbye’ originally comes from an Old English phrase meaning ‘god be with you’.
A pangram sentence is one that contains every letter in the language.
For example, the sentence is a pangram.
29. There are seven ways to spell the sound ‘ee’ in English. This sentence contains all of them: ‘He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas’.
30. The shortest, oldest, and most commonly used word is “I.”
31. A new word is added to the dictionary every two hours. About 4,000 words are added to the dictionary each year.
32. The two most common words in English are I and you.
33. 11% of the entire English language is just the letter E.
34. More English words begin with the letter "s" than with any other letter.
35. Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas
36. We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
37. The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
38. We can find 10 words in the 7-letter word "therein" without rearranging any of its letters: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.
39. The following sentence contains seven identical words in a row and still makes sense. "It is true for all that that that that that that that refers to is not the same that that that that refers to." (= It is true for all that, that that "that" which that "that" refers to is not the same "that" which that "that" refers to.)
40. There’s a name for words that we repeat often.Words we always use even though they add no meaning or value to a sentence are called crutch words. For example, in the sentence “Then I was like, OMG, then like, he went there, and like…” it is pretty obvious that “like” is the crutch word. “Actually,” “honestly,” and “basically” are also commonly used as crutch words

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