Ten Facts That You Perhaps Didn’t Know about English
Text source: Daily Express
English is one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise to understand why so many people want to study English.
You will undoubtedly be learning a lot of interesting things in your English classes. But here are some facts that perhaps you didn’t know about this fascinating language:
- The English language as we now know it began to emerge in the 14th century from a variety of dialects including Old Norse and Late West Saxon.
- Language, grammar and particularly spelling only really became standardised with the publication of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755.
- More English words begin with the letter ‘S’ than any other letter of the alphabet.
- Mandarin Chinese is the only language spoken by more people around the world than English. *Our teachers at AIT Language School say: Not anymore! Nowadays, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish are the two most spoken languages in the world.
- Around one in eight of all letters in written English is an ‘e’.
- The longest common words that can be typed on the top row of a keyboard are ‘proprietor’, ‘repertoire’, ‘perpetuity’ and ‘typewriter’ itself.
- The three words most common in spoken English are ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘the’.
- The top three words in written English are ‘the’, ‘of’ and ‘and’.
- The word ‘uncopyrightable’ consists entirely of different letters. Along with ‘dermatoglyphics’ (study of fingerprints), it is the longest such word.
- The English language grows at a rate of about one new word every two hours.