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Seven Interesting Facts About English

Interesting

No matter how we resist, English is the most used language on the planet. Yes, Chinese or Hindi are spoken more, but English is the tongue of business, and many dream to learn it if not in perfection, then at least for understanding an interlocutor. Above all else, learning any language is a kind of gymnastics for the brain. A lot of different studies have been carried out by scientists from many countries of the world which prove this advantage. It is about training several directions at once – memory, visual and sound perception, etc. And the popular belief that tongues can be studied only by those who have the inclination to it, is nothing more than a myth.

It is generally accepted that the majority of people who speak English live in the US or England. This is not true. For example, in Sweden, traditionally up to 90% of the population speak this language. The same picture is in the Republic of Nigeria. There are many countries that put English on a par with their official one and are not ashamed of it at all.

Everything is not easy in the British Isles and the States. Since the time of the great war and the creation of a new state, there have been several attempts to create a unique tongue. We can remember the same Webster who created his "American Dictionary". And in some states, in connection with the last war, English was banned for use on pain of criminal liability. Moreover, in Illinois, it was recommended using only American language and nothing else. And in today's day, there are more than 20 dialects of this tongue in the States. Knowing this, the incident when the series of books about the young wizard Potter had to be translated into American does not surprise.

About Letters

We wonder if you know anything about letters. We do not mean the question of whether you know the alphabet, but perhaps you know some interesting facts about letters? No? It is okay, we will tell you everything.

The symbol Q is extremely rare in use, and E is the most popular. People who have seriously studied this difficult language are aware that the same sign in one scale is often pronounced in several ways. A textbook version is given: He believed Caesar could see people seizing the seas. Note that [i:] is repeatedly transmitted by different combinations of signs.

Do you know that one sign lacks in today slang of the Angles and the Britons? It is a sign &. Another curiosity. Let us try to leave only the first sound in the concept of a queue, pronunciation and meaning will not change.

About Words

In all languages, there are phonemes that are missed from the general picture with a sound or with a typeface. There is a hackneyed version, the most "long-playing" word with a complete lack of vowels – rhythms. And who remembers how the word indivisibility looks like on paper? Notice that the vowel sound is present 6 times here. A medical joke, which will amuse linguists for a long time, is the name of the disease Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It means no more, no less than "Disease of the lung from the inhalation of volcanic dust".

By the way, this disease is absent in medical reference books, that is, it does not exist. A word that has 40 meanings as a verb, 17 as a noun and 7 more meanings as an adjective – that is it. It also has a couple hundred different variations. So all other words you know are just toys. Another curiosity. From 32 to 40th years, the word dord was printed in the British dictionary, and it did not have its own sense, because it was just typographical misprint.

About Sentences

  • The curious collection of words the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog contains all the signs of the alphabet without exception. It is used to display types of fonts because of this interesting fact;
  • There is the following indiscriminate joke (try to pronounce): The sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick. It is possible to break your jaw, right?
  • The most prolonged of sentences ever created is the incident of the British prose "The Rotters Club", it contains about 13955 words. The author of this anecdote, Jonathan Coe, was a cheery fellow;
  • We know about the smallest sentences from school – it is I am and I do.

A Bit of History

If we are talking about uniqueness of tongues, then everything is not so simple with the British. The language of the Angles as such appeared in medieval tribes of the Germans, at a time when, following the departed Romans, their warlike hordes invaded the Tin Islands. Examples still live in the language and dictionaries: bride from the Gothic word meaning "to cook food". And linguists call words I, we, two the oldest hyperonyms which appeared many centuries ago.

Farewell – goodbye – once sounded like God be with ye. And yes! Until the middle of the 15th century, there was no punctuation in English.

A Few Words About Simplicity

There is a version that this language has spread so enormously solely because of its simplicity. Alas, this is not true. In the root language (do not confuse it with American dialects), there are most words, something about 798,000, and synonymic series do impress imagination altogether. Let us do a digression again to the encyclopedia, where more than two thousand synonyms were selected for the word drunk. And yet, in colloquial speech, no more than two thousand words are used, and even less in texts – 1000 words and that is all.

But the desire to learn the language is strong. There is no desire to stir up the past and look for how English has become one of the main tongues of the planet. But it exists, it is taught. Programs for computers are designed in it, and all business, one way or another, is connected with English speech.

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