- English words “I”, “we”, “two” and “three” are among the most ancient, from thousands of years.
- The longest common English word without vowels is “rhythms”.
- A new word in English is created every 98 minutes.
- The word “bride” comes from an old proto-germanic word meaning “to cook”.
- The word “queue” is pronounced the same way when the last 4 letters are removed.
- 90% of everything written inEnglish uses just 1,000 words.
- There are more English words beginning with the letter “s” than with any other letter.
- Nigeria has more English speakers than the United Kingdom.
- Until the 19th century the English word for actors was “hypocrites.”
- The shortest complete sentence in the English language is “Go”.
- Phrases in English such as”long time no see”, “no go”, and “no can do” come from literal translations ofChinese phrases.
- Only two English words in current use end in “-gry”. They are “angry” and “hungry”.
- A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a “pangram”.
- The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” This sentence is often used to test typewriters or keyboards.
- The “QWERTY keyboard” gains its name from the fact that its first 6 letter keys are Q, W, E, R, T and Y. On early typewriters, the keys were arranged in such a way as to minimize the clashing of the mechanical rods that carried the letters.
- The chess term “checkmate” comes from a 14th century Arabic phrase, “shah mat”, which means “the king is helpless”.
- English is the third most commonly spoken language in the world (the first and second are Mandarin Chinese and Spanish).
- The closest languages to English are Dutch and West Flemish.
- “I” is the oldest word in the English language.
- “Almost” is one of the longest English words to have all its letters in alphabetical order.
- Most English grammar and spelling follow the standardised rules set out in Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, which was published in 1755.
- ‘Bookkeeper’ and ‘bookkeeping’ are the only 2 words in the English language with three consecutive double letters.
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