Interesting Facts About English 1. The following sentence contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." This sentence is often used to test typewriters or keyboards. 2. The only word in English that ends with the letters "-mt" is "dreamt" (which is a variant spelling of "dreamed") - as well of course as "undreamt" :) 3. A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a "blend" (or, less commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch); "motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate" (guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom. 4. The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta. 5. The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot". 6. In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign. 7. In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol". 8. If we place a comma before the word "and" at the end of a list, this is known as an "Oxford comma" or a "serial comma". For example: "I drink coffee, tea, and wine." 9. Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in "trouser pocket"). 10. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is helpless".
Posted on: Tue, 11 Jun 2013 02:41:25 +0000
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