Did you know...?
English is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 countries around the world.
English is the primary language of many African nations such as Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana, The Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
English is the most widely spoken language in the world (combining English as a first language and English as an additional language.)
There are more second language speakers of English in the world, than there are native speakers.
Words...
There are approximately 170,000 words currently in use in the English Language.
The most commonly used word in English is 'the'.
The shortest complete sentence in English is 'I am." The word 'Go!' can also be considered the shortest sentence, where the subject 'you' is implied, not written or spoken.
FUN FACT...
The word SWIMS is still SWIMS upside down.
Learning English is very tricky. Here's why...
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A Pronunciation Poem
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I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Well done! And now you wish perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
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Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead, is said like bed, not bead -
for goodness' sake don't call it 'deed'!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
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A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, or broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's doze and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, I've hardly made a start!
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A dreadful language? Man alive!
I learned to speak it when I was five!
And yet to write it, the more I sigh,
I'll not learn how 'til the day I die.
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You remember the English spelling rule
'i' before 'e' except after 'c' ? Well...
I deign to differ. My feisty neighbour, Keith, seized eight foreign species in a heinous heist.
That's weird!