English Language - Facts and Humour
English Language Facts 11. Below is a forty-six lettered word which is a kind of lung disease, try and say it out loud- ‘Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.’ 2. The longest word in common use with no letter appearing more than once is ‘uncopyrightable’ having fifteen letters. 3. The longest word in the dictionary having only one vowel is ‘strengths.’ 4. The longest word in which no letter occurs only once is ‘unprosperousness’ with sixteen letters. 5. The word ‘smiles’ is supposed to be the longest word in the dictionary because there is a mile between the first and last letters. 6. The word ‘stewardesses’ is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand unless you use the hunt-and-peck method. 7. ‘Rhythms’ is the longest English word without the normal vowels, a, e, i, o, or u. 8. ‘Almost’ is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order. English Language Facts 2 1. The longest place name in Europe with fifty-eight letters is the North Welsh town of ‘Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.’ It means: ‘St. Mary’s Church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave’ or ‘St. Mary’s [Church] by the white aspen over the whirlpool, and St. Tysilio’s [Church] by the red cave.’ 2. The Longest place name in the world is an eighty-five lettered Maori name for a hill in New Zealand which means ‘summit of the hill.’ It is called ‘Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu’ but the shortened version is ‘Taumata.’ 3. The shortest words of only two letters are: ‘AA’ which is a kind of lava, an ‘os’ which is a bone in a mouth and ‘Rx’ which is a prescription. 4. E is the most frequently used letter in the English alphabet and Q is the least. 5. The only English word with all the vowels in reverse order is ‘subcontinental.’ 6. The most commonly used words in spoken English are ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘the’, and ‘a.’ 7. There are the only five words in the English language that contain the vowels a, e, i, o, and u in that order: abstemious, abstentious, arsenious, and arteriosus and facetious. English Language Facts 3 1. The word ‘dreamt’ is the only word in the English language that ends in the letters ‘mt.’ 2. The sound ‘ough’ can be pronounced in eight different ways. The following sentence contains them all: A rough-coated, dough-faced ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough, coughing and hiccoughing thoughtfully. 3. There are several words in the English language which do not rhyme with any other words, such as diamond and silver, purple, month, skeleton, limited, ninth, and poem! 4. The word ‘pint’ which although having more than 160 words in the English language which ends in the same three letters ‘int,’ such as point and faint does not have a rhyming word. 5. There are roughly thirty words which end in ‘ange,’ such as strange, range and change but nothing rhymes with orange. It is a case of different pronunciation yet using the same letters. Some word that sound similar could possible be accepted as rhyming might be hinge, mange, or lozenge but most would disagree. English Language Facts 4 1. Of all the words in the English language, the word ‘set’ has the highest number of separate definitions in the English Language. 192 definitions according to the Oxford English Dictionary. 2. A few hundred years ago, English speakers used to pronounce the ‘k’ sound in the word ‘know.’ 3. Why is the word 'abbreviated' so long? 4. The first letter of every continent’s name is the same as the last: America, Antarctica, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. 5. Playwright William Shakespeare invented the words ‘assassination’ and ‘bump.’ 6. English Bible translator Wycliffe, (1380) introduced the word ‘atonement,’ meaning at one with. Along with angel, jealous, glory and about 1000 Latin words! 7. Tyndale, another translator of the English Bible (1524) introduced such words to us as, scapegoat, Jehovah, fishermen and beautiful. English Language Facts 5 1. The word ‘four’ has four letters; in the English language there is no other number whose number of letters is equal to its value. 2. The numbers ‘forty’ and ‘first’ are the only numbers which have its letters in alphabetical order. 3. The only number with its letters in reverse alphabetical order is ‘one.’ 4. In the English language there are less than thirty examples in which words has each of its letters occurring twice ‘intestines’ and ‘couscous’ are two of them. 5. The only day of the week to have an anagram is ‘Monday’ - ‘Dynamo.’ 6. The only months of the year to have anagrams are March and May. The anagrams are charm and yam. 7. The earliest known appearance of the word ‘hello’ being used in writing is in a letter written by Thomas Edison dated the 15th August 1877 addressed to the president of Central District and Printing Telegraph Company in Pittsburgh, T. B.A. David. Edison suggested that the word should be used to answer the telephone. Language Facts 6 1. There are roughly six thousand five hundred spoken languages in the world today. However, about two thousand of those languages have fewer than one thousand speakers. 2. Based on population, Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language in the world. In second place is Spanish followed by English and fourthly Bengali. 3. In 2002 China launched a campaign against poor English spelling on signs and menus. Officials are fed-up with restaurants listing items like ‘fried pawns’ and ‘bean eurd.’ They say so-called Chinglish words often confuse and amuse visitors giving them the wrong impression of the country. 4. In the Chinese written language, the ideograph that stands for ‘trouble’ represents two women under one roof. 5. There are more than forty-thousand characters in the Chinese language. 6. The longest alphabet is Cambodian. It has seventy-four letters compared with the twenty-six in English and twenty-two in Hebrew. English Language Odds Questions and Facts 1. Did you know that ten percent of men are left-handed while only eight percent of women are left-handed? 2. Can you make a sentence by using no more than twenty-eight letters with fourteen words? Answer: If it is to be ok, it is up to me to do it. 3. The study of word origins is called etymology. 4. The dot on top of the letter ‘I’ is called a ‘tittle’ which in Latin means something small. 5. Did you know that xylography is a wood engraving especially from the 15th century or the art of painting on wood? 6. Did you know that a zephyr is poetically a gentle breeze, and also known as the west wind? 7. Did you know that zymurgy is a branch of chemistry involved in wine making? 8. If Mr and Mrs Bigger had a baby, who would be the biggest of the three? The baby, because he’s a little Bigger! Food and Language Food words peppers everyday speech. People fish for compliments, butter up the powers that be, beef about injustice, and the comedians ham it up to get a laugh which the politicians send forth a red herring. The body builder is beefcake, a pretty woman is a hot tomato, intellectual students are eggheads, and a coward is just plain chicken. In the modern age people cook up new ideas, pull down menus on their computer screens, while the local manager guru offers recipes for success. The best-man at a wedding toasts the bride and groom and reminds them that after the honeymoon they need to smell the coffee and act as cool as a cucumber when things get difficult between them. If the over-weight husband gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar whilst on a diet, and turns beet red then he will be obliged to eat his words, ideally he should not boil over but stay as cool as ice. Pangram A pangram is a sentence that makes use of all the letters of the alphabet at least once. 1. ‘The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog’ (thirty-three letters). 2. ‘Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs’ (thirty-two letters). 3. ‘Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz’ (thirty-one letters). 4. ‘How quickly daft jumping zebras vex’ (thirty letters). 5. ‘Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim’ (twenty-nine letters). 6. ‘Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud’ (twenty-eight). 7. ‘Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymph’ (twenty-seven). 8. ‘Mr. Jock, TV quiz Ph.D., bags few lynx’ (twenty-six). A Linguist Joke A linguistics professor was lecturing to his English. “In English,” said the professor, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” One of his students sarcastically quipped from the middle of the lecture hall, “Yeah, right.” Humorous English from South Asia Rules, Signs, Advertisments and Contracts The following humorous rules, signs, advertisements and contracts include all the original spelling, spacing between letter and grammatical mistakes as witnessed by the author and diligently scribed when travelling around the world. Naturally when writing in a second language mistakes will always be made and part of learning a second language is the ability to be able to laugh at your own mistakes. Other peoples language mistakes will also help widen the smile on any tourists face. Hotel Rules 1 1. Please you pay, an attention to maintain public health, order and and safety with the hotel together. 2. You are kindly requensted not to do any cooking and laundry in your room. You are in the living-room an dinning-room. 3. We have restaurant and laundry service to meet demands in your room. 4. Inform move for room before noon. 5. …hotel would kike guests to be interested and implement fully above stipulatend regulations. 6. We qre looking getting your idea for in creasing quality in service. 7. If anything lost the authority will not be responsible. 8. Guess are kindly requested to produce your legal documents which you carry with you such as their passport…to the reception for check informalities. After then you can have your room;s key and guided to get your rest-room and other facilities by hotel-s receptionists. 9. When your use the room, giest are not allowed to move the furniture and equipment from one room to another. 10. Kindly please close your door slowly or slower. 11. Kindly please switch off the lights [etc] while leaving your room. 12. If there is any complain please inform the reception. 13. Keep all things in your responsibility inside the room. Hotel Rules 2 1. Hotel with only be responsible for items kept in the safe box director room. 2. Every suite is equipped with safe box. Therefore the hotel will not be responsible for there valuable losses. 3. When checking out, guests are requested to make a final check – up inside the safe and let the door of the safe wide open. 4. …call the receptionist according to the phonier number… 5. Guests are neither allowed to use their bedroom as liaisons offices nor to display to move the furniture and equipment from one to another. They will be liable to indemnify the hotel at current prices for any losses, breakages or damages caused to these assets. 6. If guests violate these regulations, not only will they be charged responsibilities according to the above mentioned articles but the hotel will unilaterally cancel their rooms renting contracts. Hotel Manger. 7. Room shoutd be vacated before 12:00. 8. Please inform the receptionist before one hour checkout. 9. Drop the room key at the front desk before leaving out. 10. Do not bring night girls here. 11. [Regarding the use of the phone] 15baht will be deducted from your totally. 12. The guests are requested not tos drink. 13. If any room key is lost by the guest, com pensation should be made by the guest. Hotel Rules 3 1. Guests properties and money are only responsible in case they are registered and got receipt from the hotel’s receptionist. 2. Guests are requested not to cook or launder in the hotel room. 3. Bicycles, pets, fire arms explosives, inflammable stinking things are not allowed in the hotel. 4. No charge for childrent under the age of 12 sharing room with parents. 5. Reservations will be help until 18.00 on the arrival day unless guaranteed. However, during the busiest time as Christmas, New years day. 6. Report all misbehaviour of stuff to the manager. 7. Please keep your key at reception before going out. 8. Please avoid bringging poison, explosives…and pets to the hotel. 9. Weapons and objects with offensive smell should be kept at the reception desk. 10. Fire and medical emergency, please, inform the the receptionist emergency. 11. Please avoid smoking when lying. 12. Please be quiet not to trouble other guests. 13. Please leave the key with the reception desk when going out. 14. Please sign all bills foe meak room and laundry. Hotel Phone guide A ‘how to use the phone guide’ 1. If you need anything or other service: fruit, laury, tour booking, air, visa…please contract with our reception or call 222 number. We hope to serve any service. 2. If you want to call from your room to other room, please dial the right number of the room. 3. If you want to call to outside, please dial 9 fist your telephone number. 4. If you want to call to foreign country, please dial… 5. After 15 seconds start from your make a call, the phone number have no answer please off your phone down. If you don’t give off you will have to pay for it. A Hotel laundry sheet 1. If you want to laundry or laundry service. 2. Hotel can not accept responsibility for shrinkage clastic damage, botton missing or defects or items left in the pockets. 3. In case of express service. Please note date and time and put into the bag. 4. One with same day, if we receive before 12.00PM. Please contract reception. Signs 1 1. In a museum on a photo of a helicopter: a crashed aeroplane. 2. Internet and E-mail service (next door of…guesthouse). 3. In a supermarket: no take pictures without permission. 4. In a supermarket: but two and free coke. 5. In a hotel: A 3 minit phone call costs… 6. In a hotel: no spitting everywhere. 7. In a hotel: cleanliness is the part of faith. 8. In a hotel: Swmin pool. 9. In a hotel: wel come. 10. At a go kart track: pilots must pay for the go-karts they broke. 11. Job advertisement for an English school: Can you help to teach locals English? Please contact…Thank. Signs 2 1. Outside a Pharmacist shop: If you need madicall attention see the pharmacist. 2. Outside a stationary shop: Steationary Shop. 3. Outside a restaurant: buffet every Thursday. 4. On a shop front: evere where. 5. On a dentists shop front: dentist oro. 6. On a dentists shop front: Running by qualified dentist. 7. On a road side: Redeuc speed [reduce]. 8. On a road side: Help protec our environment. 9. On a road side: Warnin hot springs. 10. At a bus stop: Bus leaves every hours and from…to the sation [station]. 11. At a money exchange: open daly [daily]. Signs 3 1. On a church wall: do not urinate on this wall this is a place of worship. 2. Outside a church: Sundayss service at 8:30am. 3. Outside a temple on a concrete slab: No sit here. 4. On a building: stick no bills. 5. On a street sign: Hooking is punishable crime. 6. On a road side: ahead flyover. 7. At a railway station: No spitting. 8. At a railway station: No bribery should be paid. 9. At a restaurant: complain box. 10. Over a door way: E-mail and internet coffee. Advertisements On a laundry shop business card: 1. Cleaning and renovating shose and sandals. 2. Special service: 50% will be added if you get the laundry on the same day (please give us before 5 hours). 3. On a flier for an extended boat trip. 4. Do you love nature? Oh, yes, all the tourists say. Sleep on the boat will close you up to nature, when the sun goes sleep, the sea life changes. The sky blanket cover, you will feel oneself existing, millions star splendour on the sky talking the fairy stories as you are in the childhood, lovers fall in love deeper- life is more beautiful. 5. Greetings to the morning wonder why things so peaceful with calm sea and sky, fresh wind and sweet smelling bird songs. General Mishaps 1. On a coach flier a coach: Air connition. 2. On a boat ride flier: big engine. 3. At a tourist office: bus tikets sold here. 4. At a hotel: Please! Bookings make here. 5. A join venture between… 6. An item for sale: Happybirth to day. 7. On something: For sel. 8. A Government tourist poster: Come to Bangladesh before the tourists do! 9. In a hotel guide: tipple room [triple]. 10. On a booking ticket: telephone massage will not be allowed. 11. On a hotel business card: TV and dish connection. 12. On a hotel business card: Departmental store. On a travel flier 1. Herby we provide to you a range of optional tours…incomparable advantages of optional tours is that they can be organised in a very short notice, usually for some hours while remaining its best quality and competitive price. If you are a tour operator or travel agents, this is just a right material for you to recommend appropriate program to the customer regardless their taste and preferences. 2. Please contact us or just ring guest relation (or reception) when you are in a hotel in… 3. Cotact offices. 4. For futher information please contact at… Another travel flier 1. Lunch will be server on the boat. 2. Walk around the island ride on elephants to take photos (not included). 3. You can also make acquainted with the lovely monkeys. 4. 14m high Buddha facing towards the east. 5. These specimens will surprise and interest you. 6. At 2pm swim and relax here to make you feel easy after a long day trip. On a taxi hire and motorbike rental flier 1. Please you don’t worry if you need driver by your sef l. 2. I have a map for you my map have every place. 3. For you to visit…if you like cave. On a tour flier 1. Dayly departeur (minimum 3 people). 2. We also organize private tours for your own group with car or minibus. 3. Exclusive of food entry fee. 4. Booking one day before. 5. The prices included… 6. The prices not included food or drink. Menu 1 1. Beer and alephol 2. Black coffe 3. Sauted mixed vegetables [salted] 4. Crushes potatoes soup 5. Cheeseger with French fries [Cheeseburger] 6. Besf teak [beef steak] 7. Fried egg, buter, cheese, break… 8. Sigapore noodles [Singapore] 9. Please to sever you! 10. Chicken Korma boneless 11. Big quarter [water] 12. T-bone steak anf French fried 13. Ham sandwiched 14. Local chiken soup 15. Beef soup as Vietnamese 16. Beef soup as Cambodia 17. Russ salad [Russian salad] 18. Humbeguer with frenc fried Menu 2 1. Pinaple, yaourt 2. Fried shrimp with coliflower 3. Union and tomatos [onion] 4. Union ringe [onion rings] 5. Freid noodles 6. If you alter the menu the prices can be different 7. Musroom pizza 8. Fried tofu with water spinache and rice 9. Fried tofu with mixe vegetable 10. Potato salad hamburger 11. Piza witheat [pizza with wheat?] 12. Eggs as baguette 13. Limon juie 14. 2 toast and 2 becon [bacon] 15. Muslims and milk [muesli] 16. Bread and honey jame 17. Scraebble eggs 18. Fish Chips (I got served prawn crackers!) On a Receipts, Bills or Contracts 1. 10% gaverment tax 2. Room 1 nigth 3. On a plane ticket. If you break your journey than 72 hours at any point, you should reconfirm your onward or return reservation. 4. The renter bears responsibility to pay for loss spare parts fix tire or motor bike was stolen. 5. If something happens to the motor bike or it doesn’t work. Please contact to us a s soon as possible. 6. Island haff day tour. Signtute Related Links: The History / Origins of the English Language The History of England / Britain The Bible - its History, Overview and Application Bible and Church Sitemap Britain Sitemap |
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