Interesting Facts About English in no particular order... The - TopicsExpress



          

Interesting Facts About English in no particular order... The most common letter in English is "e". The most common vowel in English is "e", followed by "a". The most common consonant in English is "r", followed by "t". Every syllable in English must have a vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants. Only two English words in current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and "hungry". The word "bookkeeper" (along with its associate "bookkeeping") is the only unhyphenated English word with three consecutive double letters. Other such words, like "sweet-toothed", require a hyphen to be readily readable. More English words begin with the letter "s" than with any other letter. A preposition is always followed by a noun (ie noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund). The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once. A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram". 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. 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" :) In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign. In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol". 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." 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"). The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am." The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is helpless". The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
Posted on: Tue, 09 Jul 2013 13:29:03 +0000

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