38 Unknown Facts about the English Language

They say English is a funny language and for a lot of reasons. English is a language that keeps on evolving, changing and adapting from different cultures and languages. Moreover, many people who start learning English eventually find out that not all grammar or spellings in the English language are based on pure logic, for eg, there is a ‘D’ in the word fridge but not in the word refrigerator. If you want to know more such interesting facts about the English language then you have come to the perfect place!  

Interesting Facts About English Language

1. English has one of the largest vocabularies in any language, with estimates ranging from 600,000 to over 1 million words. That is a word for every occasion! 
2. Go is the shortest sentence in the English language. 
3. English language is the most spoken language in the world and has about 2 billion speakers all over the world.
4. There are approximately more than 1 million words in this language.
5. The word “bookkeeper” is the only existing word in English with three sets of double letters arranged in a row.
6. The language English has many homophones ie words that sound the same but have different spelling and meaning.

7. Words like silver, orange or purple have no rhyming words.
8. The English language has many silent letters, ie, they are not pronounced for eg knight, island etc
9. Pilots all around the world communicate in the English language for clarity and safety. 
10. William Shakespeare is known to have invented 1,700 words that are still in use. 
11. E is the most used letter, so much so that the letter E is almost eleven per cent of the entire English language. 
12. “Queueing” is the only word with 5 consecutive vowels. 
13. About 80% of the information stored on computers worldwide is in English. 
14.  The letter ‘I’ is the shortest and oldest word in the English language.

Also Read: Top 60 Commonly Confusing Words in English!

Amazing Facts about English Language

1. The first dictionary in the English language was compiled in 1755.
2. If you write numbers in English the letter ‘B’ will not come till you write “Billion.” 
3. Palindromes are words or phrases that read the same backwards and forwards, like “racecar” or “madam.”
4. English continues to borrow words from different countries and languages. 
5. Did you know that a pangram is a sentence that uses all 26 letters of the alphabet?
6. There is a higher number of people who have English as their second language as compared to native English speakers.

9. Unlike some other languages, English does not have any governing body to dictate its proper use and regulate its development.
10. Like is the most common filler word used in English.
11. The English language has ghost words which have no meaning and originated as an error.
12. The longest word you can create using only four letters is “steals.” 
13. The USA does not have any official federal language even though English is overwhelmingly dominant.
14. The longest word in English without a vowel is “Rhythms.”
15.  English is actually a Germanic language, with about a third of its vocabulary coming from Germanic languages such as Old Norse and Old English.
16. The word ‘set’ in the English language has so many meanings that the knowledge of this term can really set you apart from everyone else. 
17. There is an addition of a new word in the English dictionary every 2 hours. There might be more words in the dictionary than the cells in your body.
18. Are you ready to read a sentence that uses all the words of the alphabet? The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Count on your own. 
19. One of the English language interesting facts is that most of the words of this language begin with S as compared to other languages. 
20. The word ‘Fish’ is the singular whereas ‘fysh’ is the plural word. The language of English is bombarded with such fun facts.
21. The word ‘almost’ has all the vowels in it.
22. “Alphabet” derives from the first two letters in the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Beta. 
23. We conclude the fun facts about the English language with an all-time interesting one. Twelfth is a word that has twelve letters. 
24. Do you know which word is the most used word in our daily lives? These English language interesting facts will let you know the same. If you closely read the sentence again you will know that the term ‘The’ is used thrice in one sentence itself. So yes the word is ‘the.’

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Hope you had fun reading these interesting facts the English language. If you like reading about facts, you can visit our interesting facts page to read more such blogs.