English is the most widely used language in the world. The British Council estimates that by 2020, up to 2 billion people will learn English and obviously the number continues to increase.
But, how much do you know about this language? Here are 11 interesting facts about English that you (probably) didn't know.
You may know that English is used in 67 countries, but you probably don't know that it is also the language of the sky, right? Indeed, all pilots, no matter where they come from, speak English – which is one of the ways English improves employability, and this is true for the travel industry and companies as well. multinational too.
We use two words “you" and "me” frequently, but do you know which word is used the most? Surprisingly, “you” only ranks 18th, while “me” is a far cry from the 50th most common English words. So who is the champion? Exactly “the" Please!
If you try the sequence of numbers in alphabetical order (for example: one, two, three, four...), it takes 'one billion' before we have to use the letter 'b'!
“Subdermatoglyphic” is the longest word in the English language without repeating any letters. It consists of 17 words, and is the medical name for the layer of skin under the fingertips. A little easier, we have the word “uncopyrightable”consists of 15 different letters with meanings that cannot be copied.
That legendary playwright is the author of countless words that we speak and write today. The most typical is the word 'fashionable' (Stylish), 'advertising (advertisement), 'laughable’ (ridiculous) and the phrase ‘fight fire with fire’ means ‘treating poison with poison’.
Every two hours a new word is added to the dictionary. The newest and strangest word is ‘nerdjacking' (obsess over minor details), 'undorse’ (reverse policy change) and ‘Mx’ (third gender spelling instead of Mr or Ms)
‘Twerk' must be quite popular with young people today as a hot dance. However, in the 16th century, ‘Twirk’ (spelled with ‘i’ instead of ‘e’) meant ‘braided beard’.
English comes from Old English, with historical traces dating back to the 5th century. Punctuation began to appear in the 15th century. The oldest word in English that is still used today is 'town'.
‘Go’ is the shortest grammatically correct sentence in English.
In English, there is no word that rhymes perfectly with the words 'month’, ‘orange’, ‘silver’ or ‘purple’.
The longest vocabulary and the letters are arranged alphabetically is 'aegilops’ – name of a plant species.