Trivia connected with English
1. English is one of the languages that have the most words - about 600 000 (excluding medical and technical terminology! Without this terminology, it would be "only" 300 000 words).
2. However, the average user of English uses about 5,000 words during the conversation and about 10 thousand words while writing.
3. To be able to communicate in English, you only have to know about 2 000 words!
4. The most commonly used English word is ’the’ (Oh! These articles!).
5. The word "triskaidekaphobia" means "fear of Friday the 13th." It also means a general fear of the number "13".
6. The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest word in which no letter is repeated.
7. That’s the sentence, which includes all 26 letters of the alphabet:
"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
9. The longest English word without a "real vowel" (a, e, i, o, or u) is the word:"rhythm".
10. According to "Oxford English Dictionary", the longest word in the English language is a 45-letter word "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" indicating lung disease.
11. No word rhymes with the words: month, orange and purple. Other sources add more such words: angel, breadth, bulb, depth, eighth, ninth, scalp and twelfth .
12. The word "set" has more meanings than any other word in the English language more than 400 !!! (what about learning at least one meaning ... :-)
14. The word ’queue’ /kiu:/ is the only one that is pronounced in the same way as after removing four last letters (then only ’q’ /kju:/ remains).
15. "Almost" is the longest word in which the letters are arranged in an alphabetical order.
16. The first "pure English" dictionary was titled "A Table Alphabeticall" and was written by an English teacher Robert Cawdrey in 1604.
17. We will not find the letter ’a’ in any number from 0 to 999. It appears only in the word 'thousand'.
18. The English word "fart" is one of the oldest words in the dictionary. Etymologically, its immediate roots are in the medieval words "fertem, feortan" or "farten", which is a carbon copy of an old German word "Ferzan". Old English form of the word "fart" was "verteth."
19. The oldest words in the English language date back to 14 000 years ago, and come from the pre-Indo-European language group called "Nostratic". The words of this language, which survived until today are:"apple" (apal), "bad" (bad), "gold" (gol) and "tin" (tin).
20. One of the laws in the state of Illinois in the USA says that speaking English is a crime. The official language is ’American’.
21. English Dictionary is made up of more than 800 000 terms, but it is proved that only 6 000 of them are currently used every day.
22. We can find the most synonyms in English.
23. ’Widow’ is the only feminine form of the word, which is shorter than the corresponding male form – ’widower’. For example ’actress’ is longer than ’actor’.
24. The word ’checkmate’ comes from the Persian "Shah Mat," which means "the king is helpless."
25. The least frequently used letter is the letter "q".
26. The most frequently used letters are: "e" (12.702%), "a" (8.167%) „i" (6973%), "o" (7.50%), "u" (2,758%).
27. It is estimated that the English language is currently used by 1.5 billion people.
28. The word ’typewriter’ is the longest one that can be typed on the keyboard QWERTY using only the upper keys. Other words are "perpetuity" (forever), "proprietor" (the owner) and the "repertoire”.
29. The longest words that can be written by means of a standard keyboard (QWERTY) and only left hand are 12-letter words: "aftereffects", "desegregated", "desegregates", "reverberated", "reverberates" and „stewardesses".
30. The word "slave" comes from the word "Slav", meaning a group of people living in the eastern Europe. In recent times, the Germanic people hijacked the Slavs and sold them to the Romans.
31. The phrase "rule of thumb" derives from the Old English law, which said that the husband could hit his wife only with something which is no wider than his own thumb.
32. "Good bye" derives from the
phrase "God be with you".
33. The English word "four" is the only number, which has as many letters as its value.
34. The longest word that is not a medical term, is the word "floccinaucinihilipilification", which means a single act or common tendency to regard something as worthless.
35. The names of all the continents begin and finish with the same letter, for example: "Europe", "Africa", "Asia".
37. A sentence: "The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is considered as the most difficult "tongue-twister".
38. "Unprosperousness" (lack of prosperity in the material life) - all the letters contained in this word are used at least twice.
39. ’Bookkeeper’ is the only word in the English language, which contains three pairs of duplicate letters, occurring one after the other.
40. Some sources say that the word ’town’ is the oldest English word.
41. Left side traffic • People travel on the left side of the road not only in the UK, but also in 75 countries and territories around the world. Time stopped there, because relatively not so long ago, practically all civilized countries had left side traffic.
42. Where does driving on the left come from? • Carriages drove up to the court in accordance with the clockwise direction, so the doors were placed on their left side so that the mighty could go straight to the parlors. • Knights wore swords on the left side to make it easier to defend themselves against an attack from the right. So they rode on horseback on the left in order to be able to attack the enemy approaching from the opposite direction in an easy way.
43. Changes in left-hand traffic ... • It began to change at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the determinant of the new order was France. Most likely changes began because of the "whim" of the rulers.
• However, some historians believe that the reason for the changes was a tactic developed by Napoleon, which was to confuse enemy forces. Reversal of everything turned out to be a successful idea in a battle, but probably less successful in everyday life ...
44.It stayed like this in England. • Revolution on the road lasted for over 100 years. In Cracow, trams began to move on the right only in the 20-ies of the last century. • To this day, people move on the left side of the road in the UK, Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, India, Japan, Indonesia, Thailand and many more. •
Źródło: http://www.geekweek.pl
Happy European Day!
Made by: Julita Klimczak & Natalia Jastrzębowska 2c gim. under the supervision of Mrs Katarzyna Cnotalska
Sources:https://www.google.pl/search?q=English&rlz=1C1EJFA_enPL652PL664&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=662&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiCzrbljKvPAhUKlxQKHfCwCKoQ_AUIBi gB