The English language has been a part of our daily life for a long time. Even those people who have never learned English can easily translate such a word like “love” or “made in China”. We hope that our selection of facts will motivate you to learn it.
1. People all over the world think that English is the most popular language, but they are wrong. Of course, it is one of the top three but after Chinese and Spanish.
2. English is deservedly considered as an international language so long, as every seventh person in the world speaks it.
3. After reading this sentence first time «Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo» it seems like meaningless eight-times repeating the same word. But this sentence is grammatically correct and has meaning [Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo.
4. There are some unique words in English. For example, the letter “I” in the word “indivisibility” is repeating 6 times.
5. Only a few people know the history of the word “goodbye” that is used as a farewell. A long time ago in Old English, it sounded like “God be with ye” but in our days we have abbreviated and deformed version of it.
6. Did you try to translate the word “set”? If no, you will be surprised because this word has more than 60 meanings.
7. The longest word with only one vowel letter is “rhythm”.
8. “Swims” is also a unique word. If you write it with big letters and turn upside down it will be the same.
9. “Uncopyrightable” is a record word in the English language without repeated letters.
10. It is possible to use all English letters that you have on your keyboard in one sentence: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”.
11. Everyone who studies English knows that there are many words with different writing and pronunciation in this language. For example, you can see this in the sentence “He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas”. Here sound [i:] is transmitted as 7 different letter combinations.
12. There is a sentence with 13955 words in the book “The Rotters`Club” by Jonathan Coe.
13. A long time ago there was a symbol “&” (ampersand) in the English alphabet.
14. The dot over letters «i» and «j» has a special name, it is called a tittle.
15. On average 7 of the 10 websites and 80% of information that is saved on all computers in the world is in English. We don’t even need to talk about cinematography, as almost 100% of modern movies are in English or at least have an English translation.
16. Only a few people know that “LOL” is an abbreviation for “Laughing out loud” or “Laugh out loud”. In 2011 an abbreviation “LOL” was included in New Oxford English Dictionary.
17. The word “OK” first appeared in 1839 when newspapers were using it as a funny abbreviation for “all correct”.
18. British English and American English has some difference. Particularly there are 24 dialects of English in the USA. Also, it is very interesting that the Harry Potter books were translated from English into American English.
19. The phrase “Time Person of the Year” includes first, second and third frequently used nouns in English by order of popularity.
20. There is only one English word where letters X, Y, Z are using in order. It is the word “Hydroxyzine.
21. Finally, as you read this article, over seven hundred million people worldwide are already learning English.
