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Ian Wilde 강사 칼럼

Did you know...?

2021년 10월 26일

SWIMS will be SWIMS even when turned upside down.

 

Did you know that enneacontakaienneagon is actually a word in the English language? (And you thought pronouncing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was difficult?). In fact, the meaning of the word is just as bizarre as the word itself: it’s a shape with ninety-nine sides.

 

Compared to other languages, English may seem simple, but that is probably because most people don’t realize it is full of crazy inventions, misinterpretations, mistakes, strange words, and needless words!

Let’s take a look at ten interesting facts about the English language:

“I am” is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.

A pangram sentence is one that contains every letter in the language.

For example, the sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a pangram.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (*breath*) is NOT the longest word in English.

This extra-long word (that approximately means “fantastic”) was popularized by the movie Mary Poppins and was eventually added to the dictionary. What you probably didn’t know is that there is a word that is longer—yes longer—than this one… 

 

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis 

 

…is a type of lung disease caused by inhaling ash and dust. Go ahead and try pronouncing that!

There are “ghost words” that mean nothing.

There are ‘ghost words’ believe it or not. Words that appeared in the dictionary because of printing errors. For example, the non-existent word ‘dord’ appeared in the dictionary for 8 years in the mid-twentieth century it became known as a ‘ghost word.’

 

The shortest oldest and most commonly used word is ‘I’. Medieval manuscripts reveal that some of the oldest words in English are ‘I’, 'we', 'two' and 'three.' 

 

This makes‘I’want all of the shortest and oldest words in the English language.  It is also the most commonly used word in English conversation.

 

A new word is added to the English dictionary every 2 hours.

 

Between now and your next meal, a new word will be put in the dictionary.  During the course of a year,

almost 4,000 new words are added.

 

 

Words we always use even though they had no meaning or value to a sentence called'crutch'words.  For example, in the sentence "Then I was like, OMG, then like he went there, and like......"  it is pretty obvious that like is the crutch word.

 

'Actually', 'honestly' and 'basically' are used commonly as crutch words.

 

 

English is the language of the air and sea.

This means that all Pilots have to identify themselves and speak in English whilst flying regardless of that origin.  All maritime law is written in the English language regardless of the country involved in any dispute.

 

‘Girl’used to mean ‘small boy’ or ‘girl’. The word go was not initially used to refer to a specific gender.  It used to mean 'child' or 'young person' regardless of gender.

 

 

 

 

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