No Way!

30 Interesting
Facts You Didn’t Know
About the English Language

ПОДГОТОВИЛА: КАТАСОНОВА С.,ГПП31

Remarkable English History Facts
Shakespeare added over 1,000 words to the English language

Addiction — Being psychologically or physically dependent on

something, usually a drug.
Bedazzled — Blinded by something incredibly wonderful.
Cold-blooded — Either an animal with cold blood (like a reptile) or a way
to describe someone who’s cruel and indifferent to emotion.
Swagger — To walk in a way that shows you’re boasting or disrespectful.
Break the ice — To relieve the tension or silence in a conversation by
talking.
The United States doesn’t have an
official language
English used to have grammatical
gender
English uses the Latin alphabet
The British Empire and the iPhone are some of the
biggest reasons English is so widespread today
English used to have 29 letters instead
of the current 26
Thorn: þ
This letter — which was pronounced
“th” as in “them” and translated to
“the” — took the place of “ye” in
place names like “Ye Olde Fishe and
Chippe Shoppe.” Over time, as
Gothic script was introduced to Old
English, “Y” and “thorn” looked too
similar — and one had to go.
Wynn:ƿ
Latin didn’t offer a letter
with the “wah” sound
popular to English
speakers. Wynn filled the
void, but not for long. Over
time, it became popular to
stick two double-“U’s”
side-by-side to create the
sound of wynn.
Yogh: Ȝ
The yogh sound entered
during the Middle English
to represent the “ch”
sound (think: Bach). It
disappeared thanks to the
French printing presses,
which decided to replace
yogh with “gh.”
Ash: ӕ
You’ve seen it in medieval
(when spelled mediaeval)
or in aeon and aether. This
is an example of Roman
ligature, meaning the tying
together of two letters, in
this case “a” and “e.”
Though it was dropped as a
letter from English, it
remains one in Danish,
Norwegian and Icelandic.
Ethel: œ
Another Latin ligature, this is the
combination of “o” and “e” that
can be seen in words like “foetus”
and “subpoena.” Now in most
cases, we replace this letter with
an e.
Ampersand: &
Though Rosen does not include this in
his book, because he says
“pedantically and fussily” that it’s a
symbol, not a letter. But the
ampersand was once considered part
of the alphabet. In fact, that’s how it got
its name. The end of the alphabet was
“x, y, z and, per se, and.” That is, “in
itself, and,” meaning the symbol for
“and.” That became am-per-sand.
English is the official language of the
air
You can blame confusing English
spelling on a guy named William
Caxton

William Caxton Noah Webster 

Surprising Statistics You Can Count On
A new English word is added to the dictionary
every two hours
The most commonly used letter in English is “E”
The longest English word is 
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
The shortest, non-elliptical sentence is “I
am.”
A non-elliptical sentence is a sentence that doesn’t leave
anything out.
Some of the oldest words in the
English language are still very
common today
I, love, black, mother, fire, hand and hear
The most commonly used adjective
is good
The most commonly used noun is time
 Amusing Alphabet Tricks and Their Names
Two English words can combine into one
A portmanteau is a word that blends the sounds of two
English words to make a new word that combines their
meanings.

hangry means hungry and angry

 You can fit every letter of the alphabet
into a single sentence
A pangram is a
sentence that
contains every letter
from the alphabet
 Some English words look the same
backward or forward
A palindrome is a word or phrase that’s spelled the same
whether you read left-to-right (like normal) or right-to-left.

Madam=madam
Some English words look the same
upside down
An ambigram is a word that looks the same upside
down as right-side up.
SWIMS

SWIMS
 There’s a name for words and phrases where
each letter is used the same number of times
An isogram is a word or phrase in which each letter
appears the same number of times.

For example, the word dialogue uses

each letter once.
 Some English words repeat to make a
new word
A tautonym in linguistics is a word that consists of the same
word twice. You might also hear this referred to as reduplication.
The common English word so-so is the perfect example of a
tautonym.
It means “just okay; fine.”
 Did You Know There’s a Word for That?
Cute Aggression
“Cute aggression” is the term for wanting to hug
something cute very hard—almost violently.
 Ze/Hir
Ze and hir are gender-neutral pronouns that’ve slowly been
gaining popularity. These are different from the gendered
pronouns “he/him” (masculine) and “she/her” (feminine).
 Genderlect
Genderlect is a style or type of speech used by a specific
gender.
 Heuristic
Heuristic is used to describe something that’s taught
or learned from experience.
 Bardolatry
Bardolatry refers to someone who’s obsessed with Shakespeare.
(Shakespeare is sometimes referred to as “The Bard.”)
 Boffola
Boffola is a joke that’s met with extremely loud laughter.
 Mouse Potato
Mouse potato refers to someone who works on the
computer a lot.
 Snollygoster

Snollygoster refers to a person without principles.

 Petrichor
Petrichor is a word to describe the way it smells after it
rains.
Thank you for your time.