All people are well aware that English is international. This is not surprising. But there are many other interesting facts about the English language that few have heard of. And now they would like to pay a little more attention.
About prevalence
According to statistics, more than a billion people speak this language. That is, one in seven speaks English. And in many states it is an official language. The list of these countries amounts to dozens of items. These are India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Gibraltar, Tanzania, Sudan, Kenya, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Ireland and many other sovereign states and territorial entities.
Many people think that most native English speakers live in the UK and the USA. But this is a fallacy, albeit with a grain 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, one cannot but notice the difference in this area between England and the USA. In those days when America was actively fighting for independence, the idea arose to come up with its own version of the language. Noah Webster, the lexicographer, succeeded in this. He created the so-called "American English Dictionary." And until 1969, a law was in force in Illinois that required its residents to speak specifically on the “local” version. Now in the USA there are various dialects of the English language. Their number is 24. They are quite different. That is why Harry Potter books have been 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 repeated six times is indivisibility.
For eight years (from 1932 to 1940), there was a noun in the dictionary that really had no meaning. It fell into the collection due to a typographical error. Then it came to be a ghost word. And that is dord.
But the longest word sounds like this - pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Interestingly, it means a non-existent lung disease, which, supposedly, begins to manifest itself after a person inhales volcanic particles and fine dust.
While telling interesting facts about the English language, it is worth noting the attention of a short but ambiguous set. It is translated in different ways. There are 44 verb meanings, 7 - adjectives, 17 - nouns. Set is a set, and a set, and a multitude, and an aggregate, and an installation. Therefore, when translating this word, you should be careful.
Letters
The most commonly used grapheme in English is "E". Least of all meets "Q". The letters of the English alphabet are insidious. Like the word set. They can be pronounced in different ways. Take for example [i:]. In the word he (in Russian - “he”) this sound is transmitted through the letter “e”. And the sea, which translates as "sea"? Here [i:] is conveyed by the letter combination ea. In the verb believe (translated as "believe") - the same principle. But the combination is different - ie.
Talking about the sounds and letters of the English alphabet, one cannot but notice the word queue. It translates as a “queue”. Interestingly, 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 it will be “kyu”.
And it’s worth mentioning that earlier in the English alphabet there was one letter more. She was the symbol "&".
What else is worth knowing?
Listing interesting facts about the English language, it should be noted that the shortest sentence that exists in it, consisting of only three letters, is attention. This is I do ("I do").
The oldest word is town. The full version of farewell, which sounds like goodbye, looks like this: God be with ye! It translates as follows - "God be with you!". That is, over time, the desire was transformed into farewell.
There are words in the English language to which it is impossible to find the appropriate rhyme. There are four of them - month (month), orange (orange), silver (silver) and purple (purple).
By the way, there is a humorous phrase in which there are all the English letters that are in the alphabet. It sounds like this: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. And the translation is: “A quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.”
It is difficult to find a word in Russian in which a consonant would be repeated 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 is the pro-German word meaning the process of cooking. But mortage, which means mortgage in Russian, is of French origin. Initially, it was a "death contract." However, the difference is not significant.
Interestingly, the Internet in English is a universal word. It exists in the same way of writing and pronunciation in every nation. Whatever language is taken as an example - Italian, Catalan, Norwegian, Greek, there will be “Internet” everywhere.
Word usage
All people are well aware of the noun title, which translates as “name”. However, few people know that the dot above the letter "i" is also indicated.
Interestingly, Underground (underground) begins and ends with the same letter combination. And this is the only such case in English with “und”. With the ending "mt", there is also only one word. This is dreamt - the verb "dreamed".
If you need to type the noun "flight attendant" in the document, then it is most convenient to do this with your left hand. Indeed, 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 in it three pairs of different letters are arranged in series.
They say that the Russian language is unique in terms of synonyms. This is true - one phenomenon can be identified by dozens of words. But English is also not far behind in this regard. By the word "drunk" you can pick up more than 200 different synonyms.
Well, in the end, I would like to say that you can really learn English in one year. Unless, of course, thoroughly deal with it.