School Wednesday

Welcome to my School Wednesday, today I'd like to tell about 20 interesting and very strange facts of the English language. 

1.  Mandarin Chinese is the only language spoken by more people around the world than English.
2. The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.
3. The three words most common in spoken English are ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘the’ …
4. Only two English words in current use end in "-gry". They are "angry" and "hungry".
5. The word "uncopyrightable" is the longest English word in normal use that contains no letter more than once.
6. A sentence that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet is called a "pangram", for example, "The five boxing wizards jump quickly".
7. In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".
8. 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."
9. "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
10. The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".
11.  The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".
12. In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.
13. There are only 4 English words in common use ending in "-dous": hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.
14. 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.
15. Donald Duck's middle name is Fauntleroy.
16. Canada is an Indian word meaning "Big Village".
17. A "moment" is actually 90 seconds.
18. "Lollipop" is the longest word that can be typed using only the right hand.
19. W" is the only letter in the alphabet that does not have one syllable. It has three!
20. The fear of vegetables is called Lachanophobia.

Thanks for your attention. 

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With Love,

Mary