{"id":3039,"date":"2013-08-25T07:39:09","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T02:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/umid.zn.uz\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2016-01-18T22:37:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T17:37:51","slug":"interesting-facts-about-english-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idum.uz\/uz\/archives\/3039","title":{"rendered":"Interesting facts about english"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

7. The word “triskaidekaphobia” means “extreme fear of the number 13”. This superstition is related to “paraskevidekatriaphobia”, which means “fear of Friday the 13th”.<\/p>\n

8. More English words begin with the letter “s” than with any other letter.<\/p>\n

9. A preposition is always followed by a noun (ie noun, proper noun, pronoun, noun group, gerund).<\/p>\n

10. The word “uncopyrightable” is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.<\/p>\n

11. A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a “pangram”.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

15. The word “alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, b\u0113ta.<\/p>\n

16. The dot over the letter “i” and the letter “j” is called a “superscript dot”.<\/p>\n

17. In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.<\/p>\n

18. In English, the @ symbol is usually called “the at sign” or “the at symbol”.<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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”).<\/p>\n

21. The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. “I am.”<\/p>\n

22. The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat” meaning “the king is helpless”.<\/p>