15 English curiosities you probably don’t know about!

15 English curiosities you probably don’t know about!

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The world of languages is an incredible place and each one of them has its own history and curious situations. Today we bring you a summary of some interesting English curiosities.

1. English is the language with the largest international presence. Although it is not the most spoken language, that merit goes to Chinese in first place, followed by Spanish.
2. The United States is the country with the largest number of English speakers. In second place is India, followed by Pakistan and Nigeria. The United Kingdom is relegated to fifth place. Although it is the country where the highest percentage of the population speaks English.
3. In reality, English originated in what is now known as Northwestern Germany and The Netherlands.
4. It is the only major language that does not have its own Royal Academy, unlike the Académie Française, the Real Academia Española and the German Rat für deutsche Rechtschreibung. These organizations are responsible for monitoring the evolution of their respective languages in terms of usage, vocabulary and grammar.
5. More than 80% of the information stored on computers worldwide is written in English.
6. English is the official language of sixty-seven countries.
7. The English alphabet has only 26 letters, but 44 different sounds. This is one of the reasons why Spaniards have so many pronunciation problems, as we are used to words being read as they are written.
8. A quarter of the world’s population speaks at least some English.
9. The most used adjective in English is good.
10. The most used noun is time, i.e. time, hour, moment.
11. The acronym lol (laughing out loud), often used in the media as equivalent to ja, ja or ja, ja, ja in Spanish, was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2011.
12. Shakespeare invented some words we use today in English, such as birthplace, blushing, undress and torture, in addition to many others.
13. The word goodbye originally comes from an Old English expression meaning, “God be with you.”
14. Angry and hungry, two words that are often confused, are the only words that end in -gry.
15. Abstemious and facetious are the only two words in the English dictionary that have the vowels in order.

Of course, there are many, many more and these are just a few of them. So now you know; if you are learning the language or you like languages in general, it is very important to know this kind of data. Learning a new language is opening the door not only to it, but to a whole culture that will enrich your knowledge and vision of the world.

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