The most common vowel in English is “e”, followed by “a”.
The most common consonant in English is “r”, followed by “t”.
Every syllable in English must have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants.
Only two English words in current use end in “-gry”. They are “angry” and “hungry”.
The word “bookkeeper” (along with its associate “bookkeeping”) is the only unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other such words, like “sweet-toothed”, require a hyphen to be readily readable.
The word “triskaidekaphobia” means “extreme fear of the number 13”. This superstition is related to “paraskevidekatriaphobia”, which means “fear of Friday the 13th”.
More English words begin with the letter “s” than with any other letter.
A preposition is always followed by a noun (i.e. noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).
The word “uncopyrightable” is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.
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 only word in English that ends with the letters “-mt” is “dreamt” (which is a variant spelling of “dreamed”) – as well of course as “undreamt” 🙂
A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a “blend” (or, less commonly, a “portmanteau word”). Many new words enter the English language in this way. Examples are “brunch” (breakfast + lunch); “motel” (motorcar + hotel); and “guesstimate” (guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom.
The word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bÄ“ta.
The dot over the letter “i” and the letter “j” is called a “superscript dot”.
In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.
In English, the @ symbol is usually called “the at sign” or “the at symbol”.
If we place a comma before the word “and” at the end of a list, this is known as an “Oxford comma” or a “serial comma”. For example: “I drink coffee, tea, and wine.”
Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in “trouser pocket”).
The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. “I am.”
The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat” meaning “the king is helpless”.
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.”
The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is “rhythm”.
The only planet not named after a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
There are only 4 English words in common use ending in “-dous”: hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
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.
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.
English originates from North West Germany and the Netherlands.
English is spoken by 952 million people around the world.
Most English grammar and spelling follow standardised rules.
The most used adjective in the English language is ‘good’
English is the language of the sky
The longest word in the English language contains 45 letters. the word is ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’,which is a lung disease caused by inhalation of fine silca dust.
William Shakespeare had a great influence on the English language.
The word “set” has the most number of definitions in the English language – 430 according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The English alphabet has 26 letters, but the language has over 40 distinct sounds.
The English language has more than a million words, but only around 170,000 of them are currently in use.
The word “girl” originally meant a young person of either sex, but it eventually came to refer specifically to females.
The word “nice” originally meant “silly” or “foolish”, but its meaning changed over time to its current definition.
The word “dord” once appeared in the dictionary, but it was a mistake – it was meant to be “D or d” as an abbreviation for density.
The letter “q” is the only letter that doesn’t appear in any U.S. state name.
The word “hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia” means a fear of long words.
The word “goodbye” comes from “God be with ye.”
The letter “w” is the only letter in the English alphabet with more than one syllable.
English has many words with no rhyming words, such as “orange” and “silver.”
The longest word that can be typed using only the top row of a keyboard is “typewriter.”
The word “silly” originally meant “happy” or “fortunate.”
The word “oxymoron” is itself an oxymoron, as it combines two words with opposite meanings – “oxy” meaning sharp and “moron” meaning dull.
The word “queue” is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
By sophia
Feb 20, 2023
100 english trivia, 11 weird facts about the english language, 15 interesting facts about english language, 66 facts about the english language, amazing facts in english for school assembly, english facts for students, interesting facts about english grammar, interesting facts about english pronunciation
grace