Have you ever wondered why English has become so widespread in the world? There is an opinion that due to its simplicity. But this is at first glance. If you look beyond the grammar and learn more about the language itself, you will discover an unusual history and a rich vocabulary.
Here are 35 fun facts that will open up the English language for you from a new perspective.
- In English, there is a special name for people whose identity is unknown or not disclosed for one reason or another: for men the name John Doe is used, and for women Jane Doe. Analogues are found in other languages.
- Every two hours a new word is added to the English dictionary. That’s about 4,000 words in a year!
- The first English dictionary was written in 1755.
- The oldest English words that are still used today are: town, I, we, two, three.
- English is spoken by 1 billion people, which is every 7th person on the planet.
- English is the official language of the sky. When flying internationally, pilots communicate in English, regardless of their native language or nationality.
- Of all the English words, "pronunciation" is the most commonly mispronounced word!
- For 8 years the ghost word “Dord” was present in the English dictionary. This word does not exist; it was included in the dictionary due to a printing error. The word remained in the dictionary from 1932 to 1940.
- The @ symbol in English is called the at sign or the at symbol.
- The # symbol has several names in English: hash, pound sign, number sign.
- The dot over the letters i and j is called a superscript dot. According to Oxford Dictionaries, the dot on the letter i was added in the Middle Ages to distinguish the letter from similar ones. J is a variant of i that appeared at the same time, but subsequently became a separate letter.
- In English, every syllable must have a vowel sound, but not every syllable has a consonant.
- Some are used only in the plural: glasses, scissors, trousers, jeans, pajamas.
- English is second only to Mandarin Chinese in terms of the number of speakers. It is the official language of 67 countries.
- However, the United States does not have an official language. Most people in the country speak American English. There are 24 dialects of English in the country.
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- "Go!" is the shortest grammatically correct sentence in English.
- The & symbol was once a full-fledged letter of the English alphabet.
- The most common words in English are: pronouns I and You, adjective - good, noun - time.
- The happiest language in the world is English. The word happy is used 3 times more often than sad.
- The English word set has more than 100 meanings. The word is used as a verb, noun and adjective. You need to be very careful about the context in which the word is used and consult a dictionary.
- Shakespeare invented many English words, including: birth place, blushing, torture.
- In 2011, the Internet-famous word lol (laughing out loud) was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.
- About 80% of the information stored on computers in the world is in English.
- The two most common dialects of English are British and American. Moreover, there are regional variants of each of them with subdialects.
- French (French Academy), Spanish (Royal Academy of the Spanish Language), and German (Council for German Spelling) have organizations responsible for the study of languages and control of language and literary norms. Oddly enough, there is no organization to coordinate the development of the English language.
- English has many counternyms - words that mean different or opposite concepts depending on the context in which they are found. Here are some examples.
- Crutch words are words that help fill pauses during a conversation, give yourself time to think, or emphasize a certain word. By themselves, these words do not carry any meaning. Examples: basically, literally, actually, like, I mean.
- The word therein includes 9 more words, all in order: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, herein.
- The word goodbye comes from the phrase "God be with you." ("May the Lord be with you.")
- The chess term checkmate comes from the Persian phrase "shāh māt", which literally means "the king is helpless".
- The pronunciation of the word queue will not change, even if you exclude all letters from it except the first.
- English belongs to the Anglo-Frisian subgroup of the Western group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages.
- E is the most common letter in English, Q is the rarest.
- During the early Middle Ages, just after the Romans abandoned British lands, the Celts were invaded by Germanic tribes. It was among them that the English language originated. As the British Empire expanded, the language spread to other parts of the world.
- The English language did not have a system of punctuation until the introduction of printing in the 15th century. Up to this point, there was virtually no punctuation.
Do you know other interesting facts about the English language? Share in the comments!
Learning a foreign language is not only useful, but also interesting if you take a little break from grammar and phonetics and learn more about the language itself. English is the most widely spoken language in the world after Chinese and Spanish. More than a billion people speak it, but almost half of them are unlikely to know why the pronoun “I” is always capitalized, or what the longest word is in the English language. These and some other unexpected facts will be discussed further.
The English language originated in the early Middle Ages, oddly enough, among the Germanic tribes that invaded Britain after the Romans abandoned it.
The word bride comes from an ancient Germanic word that means “to prepare food.”
The oldest words in the English language are the pronouns I (I), we (we), the numerals two (two) and three (three) and the nouns town (town), bad, gold, apple. Linguists believe that these lexemes arose several thousand years ago.
Until the 15th century, English sentences were not punctuated. English punctuation today is much simpler compared to its spelling.
Until the 19th century, an actor was called in English hypocrite, which means “hypocrite.”
Words and expressions of random origin
Everyone knows the English word “goodbye”, which is used when saying goodbye. But few people know that it comes from the expression: “God be with you,” that is, “May the Lord be with you.” The phrase in oral speech was shortened over time, and an extra “o” appeared in the syllable “god” under the influence of the greetings “good morning” and “good day”.
The Proto-Indo-European root "bhleg-", meaning "to burn/shine", was taken as the basis for the formation of the color name in English: black. Initially, the Proto-Germanic word appeared: “blakaz” (“burnt”), from which “black” later came - black color.
Australian English tends to form words with the suffix "-ie", which gives words an informal connotation. "Firie", for example, instead of "firefighter", "barbie" instead of "barbecue", "tinnie" instead of "tin". Thus, the word “selfie” appeared in Australia. The first use of the word was recorded on the Internet back in 2002. But the term “selfie” became widespread, first in English-speaking countries and then in other countries, only ten years later.
Among all languages, English is perhaps the only language in which the pronoun “I” must be capitalized. But this has nothing to do with the high self-esteem of the British; most likely, this is a pure coincidence. Once upon a time, the first person pronoun (in Old and Middle English) was written as "ic", but the consonant sound "s" was reduced over time. The lonely letter “i” in the texts was barely noticeable, so they began to lengthen it and gradually turned from small to capital.
The roots of the English word “dinner” (dinner) come from the Old French “disner” (breakfast). Both in England and in continental Europe, the term came to mean the main meal, which was taken at noon. In the 18th century, the main course was eaten later and later, and dinner could already fall at 7 pm. Today, when the British use the word “dinner,” they mean dinner, despite the fact that they eat more at lunch.
There is an interesting sentence in English that is used to demonstrate possible lexical uncertainty: “James while John had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.” At first glance it seems meaningless, but it is grammatically correct. You just need to put in all the right punctuation marks. Then it will look like this: “James, while John had had “had”, had had “had had”; “had had” had a better effect on the teacher.” Translated into Russian, it sounds something like this: “While John used “had”, James used “had had”; the teacher preferred “had had.”
According to ancient legend, Robin Hood took property and money from the rich and distributed it to the poor. But the nickname Good does not mean “good” at all, as many are accustomed to think. The word "Hood" (as it is written in English) translates as "hood" or "to hide with a hood" (an element of Robin Hood's clothing).
The English word "McJob" is not very popular with McDonald's. The fact is that this is the name for a dead-end job with low pay, similar, according to native English speakers, to that provided by the management of a popular fast food chain. Representatives of McDonald's have repeatedly approached the compilers of dictionaries with a request to remove this lexeme, but philologists have refused the request.
Features of English words and letters
Continuing to discover interesting facts about the English language, it should be noted that the most popular letter in it is E, while the rarest is Q.
In the 15-letter word “uncopyrightable,” not one of them is repeated.
But in the word “indivisibility” (unity), the vowel letter “i” is repeated six times, and at the same time it is the only vowel in the word.
Goddessship is the only word in the English language with a triple consonant.
It is impossible to find a rhyme for only four words in the English language: “month” (month), “orange” (orange, orange), “purple” (purple), “silver” (silver).
The symbol &, well known in modern English, was once a full-fledged letter of the alphabet. Many people know that the sign called “ampersand” replaces the conjunction “and”. But there is still a difference between it and the union. For example, combining the names of writers or authors of a film script with an ampersand means that they worked together on the text as co-authors. The conjunction “and” is used if they worked independently of each other, perhaps without even discussing working together.
Some sounds in English can be represented by different letter combinations. So, for example, in the sentence He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas, the sound is expressed by seven different letter combinations.
The most commonly mispronounced word in English is “pronunciation.”
If you remove the last four letters from the word “queue”, then its pronunciation will remain the same - .
The word "set" is the most ambiguous in the English language. Judge for yourself: for a verb there are 44 main meanings, for a noun – 17 meanings and for an adjective – 7 meanings, plus a huge number of different options.
The longest word in English, “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis”, refers to the name of the disease. It is translated into Russian as follows: “lung disease caused by inhalation of particles of volcanic or other origin.” The most interesting thing is that in reality such a disease does not exist.
The word "drunk" has about 2,241 synonyms. This result was recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. Here are a few of them:
- Stoned - completely drunk
- tipsy - tipsy, drunk
- bashed - drunk
- flying - drunk
- glazed - drunk
- befuddled - befuddled
- buzzed - in a state of euphoria from alcohol
- fuddled - tipsy
- high - drunk
- inebriated - drunk
- laced - intoxicated
- lush - drunkard
- muddled - intoxicated
- plastered - drunk as hell
- tanked - drunk on beer
- totaled - “killed”
- wasted - completely drunk
- boozedup - drunk
- feelingnopain - to be drunk, to be passed out
- groggy - intoxicated, fond of drinking
- juiced - plentiful
- liquoredup - drunk
- seeingdouble - to get drunk to the point where you see double
- threesheetstothewind - dead drunk, dead drunk, knee-deep sea
- tight - under pressure
- under the influence - while drunk.
In the period from 1932 to 1940, one could find the word without the meaning “dord” in English dictionaries. The “ghost word” “wandered” in dictionaries for a long time due to a typographical error.
In English, the tongue twister: The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick is considered the most difficult.
The uniqueness of The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is that it contains all the letters of the English alphabet. This is why it is used to showcase different fonts.
In terms of vocabulary, English (among more than 2,700 languages) is the richest. The Oxford Dictionary alone includes 500,000 lexical units, but in reality there are much more words in English.
Learning English can be not only very useful, but also really interesting. Our selection of facts will help you verify this.
Statistics
Although English is only the third most popular language, the total number of people who speak English is over a billion. This is approximately every seventh earthling. However, do not think that the majority of English speakers live in the USA and England. For example, Nigeria has more English speakers than England. And in Sweden, 89% of residents know this language.
UK and USA
In the linguistic sphere, there are rather vague relations between these countries. During the period of the struggle for independence and the construction of the young American state, attempts were made to invent their own American language, in which Noah Webster was especially successful, publishing his “American Dictionary of the English Language.” And in the state of Illinois, until 1969, there was a law prohibiting speaking English. The American language was to be used as the official language of this state. However, currently in the United States, researchers identify as many as 24 dialects of the English language. It is not surprising that publishers had to translate the Harry Potter books from English to American.
Letters
❖ The most commonly used letter in English is E, and the least common is Q.
❖ Everyone knows that letters in English can be pronounced in completely different ways. Here's a good example: He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas (He believed that Caesar saw people seizing the seas). In this sentence, the sound is conveyed by seven different letter combinations.
❖ The English alphabet once had one more letter. This letter was the & symbol.
❖ If you remove the last four letters in the word queue, its pronunciation will not change.
Words
In any language there are unusual words that stand out from the crowd because of their interesting spelling or sound. Here are some examples from English.
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❖ The longest English word without vowels is rhythms.
❖ In English there is a word with a vowel that is repeated six times - indivisibility (unity).
❖ The most ambiguous word in the English language is set. It has 44 basic verb meanings, 17 noun meanings, 7 adjective meanings, and several hundred more different variations. So when translating this insidious word you need to be especially careful.
❖ Pneumonoultrais the longest word that denotes the name of the disease and is translated into Russian something like this: “a lung disease caused by inhalation of particles of volcanic origin or other types of fine dust.” The most interesting thing is that such a disease does not actually exist.
❖ From 1932 to 1940, due to a typographical error, there was a word in the English dictionary that had no meaning. This word is dord, also known as the ghost word.
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❖ The most difficult tongue twister in the English language: The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.
❖ The sentence The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is unique in that it contains all the letters of the English alphabet. This is why it is used to showcase different fonts.
❖ The shortest English sentences containing a subject and a predicate are I am and I do.
❖ The longest sentence in prose fiction in English is 13,955 words (The Crawling Club, Jonathan Coe).
Story
❖ The English language appeared in the early Middle Ages among the Germanic tribes (!) that invaded Britain after the Romans left.
❖ The word bride comes from an old German word meaning the process of cooking.
❖ The oldest words in English are I (I), we (we), two (two) and three (three). Linguists believe that they appeared several thousand years ago.
❖ The word goodbye once sounded completely like God be with ye (Old English “May the Lord be with you”).
❖ Until the 15th century, there were no punctuation marks in the English language.
Wealth and poverty
There is a theory that the English language has become so widespread due to its simplicity and unambiguity. However, this is not at all true. The English language has the most words (about 800,000) and the richest synonymic series. For example, for the word drunk there are 2,241 synonyms, and this result is even recorded in the Guinness Book of Records. In addition, English is one of the fastest growing languages. Every 98 minutes a new word appears in conversational practice.
And yet 90% of texts written in English use no more than 1,000 different words. And for ordinary everyday communication, it is enough to know 1,500–2,000 words.
What interesting facts about the English language do you know?
Fact/ … Morphemic-spelling dictionary
FACT- In the popular development, in the Russian nationalization of foreign words, historical semantic patterns can be established. Some concepts, despite the peculiar differences in their national linguistic expression, contain an international... ... History of words
fact- noun, m., used. often Morphology: (no) what? fact, why? in fact, (see) what? fact, what? fact, about what? about the fact; pl. What? facts, (no) what? facts, why? facts, (see) what? facts, what? facts about what? information about facts 1. A fact is called... Dmitriev's Explanatory Dictionary
FACT- FACT, fact, husband. (lat. factum). 1. An actual event, phenomenon, something that actually happened. Historical fact. Dare to face the facts. This is fact, not fiction. “The resolution of the national question in the Soviet Union is one... Ushakov's Explanatory Dictionary
Fact- (lat. factum – іstelgen, zhүzege аskan) әdettegi magynada fact “okiga”, “kubylys” ұғымDAрянѣ synonymous with bolada. Fact – there was adam қызмінінінѣе незе мінѣунѣ Objectіѕі Bolatyn realdylyktyn (shyndyktyn) fragments (more). Alemdegi ogiga retindegi fact... Philosophy terminerdin sozdigi
FACT- 1. a, husband. A valid, very real event, phenomenon; what actually happened, happens, exists. The facts speak for themselves. State the facts. Check the facts. Present someone with a fait accompli. (in a situation where everything is already... ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary
FACT- (from Latin factum done, accomplished) 1) synonymous with the concepts of “truth”, “event”, “result”; something real as opposed to fictional; concrete, individual, as opposed to abstract and general; 2) in the philosophy of science, a special kind of p... Philosophical Encyclopedia
FACT- (lat. factum done deed, act). Incidents, an actual event. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. FACT lat. factum, done, from facere, to do. A reliable event that is not subject to... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
Fact- Fact ♦ Fait Any event, if it is established or recorded, which cannot happen without experience. When one speaks of a “scientific fact” that is the subject of experiment or at least rigorous observation, one almost always means... ... Sponville's Philosophical Dictionary
fact- A; m. [from lat. factum done] 1. A true event, an actual occurrence or a real phenomenon; example, case. Valid, well-known, historical f. F. Russian history. F. from whose l. life, practice. F. my biography. Reflect… … encyclopedic Dictionary
Books
- Russian pharaohs. Unbelievable but true! Volume 3, Tanasenko Vasily Nikolaevich. In the third book of the popular series “Time Reveals Everything,” the author continues to reveal sensational facts of the true history of the Slavic peoples." Russian Pharaohs: incredible, but true! "-next... Buy for 408 RUR
- Dominance. Fact or fiction? , Barry Eaton. Dominance: fact or fiction? is Barry Eaton's second book, which takes an alternative view of how dogs perceive themselves and their owners. If necessary…
Today, I will introduce you to an excellent resource that will not leave you indifferent and will help you learn English!
Greetings, friends!
The weather outside is starting to get better! The sun is shining and the warm breeze is blowing! Summer is just around the corner! Although, perhaps, among my subscribers there are people who, on the contrary, really love rain. In any case, as they say, nature has no bad weather! You should look for your advantages everywhere!
Here are listed more than 1000 facts from various subject areas that will make you laugh, surprise you, but in no case leave you indifferent. In addition, with the help of these sentences you can expand your vocabulary. The facts are complemented by funny pictures and funny videos.
For example, a very fun fact:
Real fact #61“Piglets get sunburned.” - “Pigs get sunburned.”
Such bright infographics help you remember the facts themselves, and therefore words and phrases in English.
Cool videos.
For the video example, I chose real fact No. 970:
“Dolphins can’t distinguish between scents.” — “Dolphins are unable to smell.”
You will find more videos in this section of the site. With their help, you can practice the correct pronunciation of new words and even those words whose meanings you know.