Fun Facts About English

So it’s the weekend and time for a bit of fun and relaxation. I thought this would be the perfect time to look at some interesting facts about the English language. Do you need to know these things? Probably not; but they are great to throw in as quiz questions, or simply to amaze your friends with your knowledge!

Let's start with a nice simple one, what is the shortest complete sentence in English? Go on, think about it. Have you got any ideas? For those who are thinking “I am”, that's not a bad guess but there is something even shorter. Give up? Okay, I'll tell you “Go”! Well done to anyone who got the correct answer before I gave it away. Now can you think of words that rhyme with any of the following: month, orange, silver or purple? Take five minutes and think hard. Okay so have you thought of any? No? That's because there aren't any! Of the thousands and thousands of words in the English language these words have no rhyming partners.

 

 

I think you may enjoy the following little snippet of information. “Therein” is a simple little seven letter word, but it contains within it thirteen words that can be written using consecutive letters. Don't believe me – well here we go with a list of them:

1. the
2. he
3. her
4. er
5. here
6. I
7. there
8. ere
9. rein
10. re
11. in
12. therein
13. herein

Changing the subject completely, how do you like geography? Have you ever noticed that each of the seven continents all start and end with the same letter? Let's take a look; we have Africa, America (North), America (South), Antarctica, Asia, Australia and Europe. What a coincidence!  Looking at the alphabet, “almost” is the longest, most commonly used word with all the letters in alphabetical order. There is actually a longer word “aegilops” - which is a type of grass, more generally known as goat grass, but as most people would be unfamiliar with this term, I think it's fair to stick with almost.

 

Just a few more quirky facts for you. The word four is the only number which has the same number of letters as its value. Bookkeeper and bookkeeping are the only English words with three consecutive double letters, and “rhythms” is the longest word in English without a single vowel. Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, the word “set” has more definitions than any other word.  Just check it out in the dictionary – I'm sure you will be amazed!           

Don’t forget, if you need help with correct written English, visit our website www.writtenenglishcorrected.com, and don’t forget to follow us on facebook and Twitter.