It is a well-known fact that the English language is one of the most used in the world today. But how much do we really know about it? Let’s take a break and list down 8 amusing facts about the English language.
- All pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English while flying, regardless of their origin.
- Only three English words in current use end in “-gry”. They are “angry”, “hungry” and “hangry” (which was recently added to the Oxford online dictionary)
- 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.”
- 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.
- If you wrote out all the number names in order, the first “B” you’d see would be the “B” in billion.
- The longest word in English has 45 letters: ‘pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis’! It is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and sand dust.
- In 1934, Webster’s released a dictionary accidentally containing a ghost word – “dord” – that wasn’t caught until 1939.
- In English, multiple adjectives are supposed to be listed in the following order: Quantity, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material and Purpose.
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