Interesting facts about English: the longest word in English, dialects, letters of the English alphabet

All people know perfectly well that English is international. This is no longer surprising. But there are many other interesting facts about English that few have heard of. And they would like to pay a little more attention.

About prevalence

If you believe the statistics, then this language is owned by more than a billion people. That is, every seventh speaks English. And in many states it is the official language. The list of these countries is estimated in dozens of titles. These are India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Gibraltar, Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Ireland and many other sovereign states and territorial sites.

Many believe that most people who are native English speakers live in the UK and the US. But this is a delusion, albeit with a share of truth. In Nigeria, for example, there are more native speakers than in England. And in Sweden, 89% of its citizens own it.

Telling interesting facts about the English language, we can not fail to note the difference in this area between England and the United States. In those days, when America was actively fighting for independence, the idea arose to invent its own version of the language. Noah Webster, the lexicographer, has succeeded in this. He created the so-called "American Dictionary of English". And until 1969 in Illinois, there was a law that required its residents to speak specifically on the "local" version. Now in the United States there are different dialects of English. Their number is 24. They are quite different. That's why Harry Potter books were translated from traditional English to American. And the total number of dialects in the world is 125 pieces.

About words

Rhythms is the longest structural unit in which there are no vowels. Translated as "rhythms". The longest word in English with a vowel repeating six times is indivisibility.

For eight years (from 1932 to 1940) there was a noun in the dictionary that really did not matter. It fell into the collection due to a typographical error. Then it was called a ghost word. And this is the dord.

But the longest word sounds like this - pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It is interesting that it denotes a non-existent lung disease, which supposedly begins to manifest itself after the inhalation of volcanic particles and fine dust by man.

Telling interesting facts about the English language, it is worth noting the short but multivalued set. It is translated in different ways. There are 44 verbal meanings, 7 - adjectives, 17 - nouns. Set - this is the set, and the set, and the set, and the aggregate, and the installation. Therefore, when translating a given word, it is worth to be attentive.

Letters

The most commonly used grapheme in English is "E". The least common is "Q". The letters of the English alphabet are insidious. Like the word set. They can be pronounced differently. Take for example [i:]. In the word he (in Russian - "he"), this sound is transmitted by the letter "e". And the sea, which translates as "the sea"? Here [i:] is passed by the letter combination ea. In the verb belief (translated as "believe") - the same principle. But the combination is different.

Talking about the sounds and letters of the English alphabet, you can not fail to note the word queue. It is translated as a "queue". It is interesting that if you remove the last four vowels and leave only one "q", then the pronunciation will not change at all. And in the first case, and in the second case, it will be a "kew".

And it's worth mentioning that earlier in the English alphabet there was one more letter. It was the symbol "&".

What else is worth knowing?

Listing interesting facts about the English language, we should note the shortest sentence that exists in it, consisting only of three letters. This is I do ("I do").

The oldest word is town ("city"). The full version of the farewell, which sounds like goodbye, looks like this: God be with ye! This translates as follows: "God be with you!". That is, over time, the wish has turned into a farewell.

There are such words in the English language to which it is impossible to find the appropriate rhyme. Their four are month, orange, silver and purple.

By the way, there is a joking phrase in which all the English letters in the alphabet are present. It sounds like this: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. And the translation is: "A fast brown fox jumps through a lazy dog."

In Russian it is difficult to find a word in which consonant would repeat three times in a row. But in English - quite. This is Goddessship, translated as "divinity".

Other facts

According to official data, every 98 minutes a new English word is born in the world. 80 percent of the information stored on all PCs in the world is created in this language.

At the heart of such a noun as bride (bride), lies the pro-German word, meaning the process of cooking. But mortage, in Russian meaning a mortgage, is of French origin. Initially, it was a "mortal contract". However, the difference is not significant.

It is interesting that the "Internet" in English is a universal word. It exists in the same form of spelling and pronunciation in every nation. Whichever language is taken as an example - Italian, Catalan, Norwegian, Greek, everywhere there will be "Internet".

Usage

All people know well the noun title, which translates as "name". However, very few people know that this is also the point above the letter "i".

It is interesting that Underground (underground) begins and ends with the same letter combination. And this is the only such case in English with "und". With the end of "mt" there is also only one word. This dreamt - the verb "dreamed".

If you need to type in the noun "stewardess", then it is most convenient to do it with your left hand. After all, in English it looks like Stewardesses. And all these letters are in the upper left corner of the keyboard.

Another interesting word is bookkeeper (accountant). You can see that there are three pairs of different letters in it in sequence.

They say that the Russian language is unique in terms of synonyms. This is really so - one phenomenon can be denoted by dozens of words. But English, too, does not lag behind in this respect. By the word "drunk" you can choose more than 200 different synonyms.

And finally, I would like to say that it is really possible to learn English in one year. If, of course, thoroughly to do it.