1. The most common letter in English is
"e".
2. The most common vowel in English is
"e", followed by "a".
3. The most common consonant in English is
"r", followed by "t".
4.Every syllable in English must have a
vowel (sound). Not all syllables have consonants.
5.Only two English words in current use
end in "-gry". They are "angry" and "hungry".
6.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.
7.The word "triskaidekaphobia"
means "extreme fear of the number 13". This superstition is related
to "paraskevidekatriaphobia", which means "fear of Friday the
13th".
8.More English words begin with the
letter "s" than with any other letter.
9. A preposition is always followed by a noun (ie
noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).
10.The word "uncopyrightable" is
the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.
11.A sentence that contains all 26 letters
of the alphabet is called a "pangram".
12. 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.
13.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" :)
14.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.
15.The word "alphabet" comes
from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.
16.The dot over the letter "i"
and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".
17.In normal usage, the # symbol has
several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.
18.In English, the @ symbol is usually
called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".
19.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."
20.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").
21.The shortest complete sentence in
English is the following. "I am."
22.The word "Checkmate" in chess
comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is
helpless".
23. We pronounce the combination
"ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which
contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman
strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he
coughed and hiccoughed."
24.The longest English word without a true
vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
25.The only planet not named after a god
is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus,
[Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.
