What are some mind-blowing facts about the English language?

1. At least five drinks can also be used as verbs:

Water: A clear, tasteless liquid; to spray water onto plants.

Milk: A white liquid made in most mammals; to extract this liquid for consumption, typically from a cow or goat.

Juice: The liquid stored in fruits and vegetables; to turn fruits and vegetables into this substance.

Shake: A drink made of ice cream and milk; to move an object up and down or from side to side with rapid, forceful, jerky movements.

Cream: A milky liquid used in coffee and other hot drinks; to utterly defeat.

2. The following sentences are all grammatically correct:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo:

(Buffalo from Buffalo, NY, bully other buffalo from Buffalo, NY.)

Police police police Police police:

(Police from Police, Poland, patrol other police from Police.)

The can can can can the can can.

(The can-can dance is able to outperform the can-can.)


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The last one doesn’t make literal sense, but grammatically, it is correct.

3. Yuo can msot liekly raed tihs.

Did yuo raed taht crorectly? No. But yuo can stil undresantd.

This is because our brains often look at the first and last letters of a word to determine its meaning, and assumes words without having to fully read them.

4. No and Go are the shortest sentences that can be formed.

5. If the ‘gh’ from ‘rough’ make an f sound, the ‘o’ in ‘women’ makes an ‘i’ sound, and the ‘ti’ from ‘nation’ makes a ‘sh’ sound, then ‘ghoti’ is pronounced ‘fish’.

6. The sentence “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” contains every letter in the alphabet.

In fact, keyboard manufacturers type this sentence in order to ensure that all of the keys work.

7. If the Saxons and Angles hadn’t immigrated to England in the Middle Ages, America would likely be speaking Celtic.

The Angles were the ones who brought the earliest form of English to Britain.

8. There IS a word that rhymes with orange.

This word is “sporange”, which is a celled plant structure found in fungi, mosses, algae, and other plants. In these pods, spores are produced.

A lot of people complain about how hard learning English is. Now try Korean or Chinese.


This information was taken from Quora. Click here to view the original post.

Do you find English a difficult language to learn? What languages are the most difficult ones?

#IQ #language #Quora

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What are your thoughts on this subject?
32 Comments
Eve
Our grade one teacher taught us the alphabet using the quick brown fox and it is something I've never forgotten. Thanks Mrs. Graham.
1
Mar 19, 2023 10:38AM
Jim Mascair
My favorite words are these that change their pronunciation while changinging between the noun form and verb form, words like produce or object. I also like words with obscure meanings like near meaning cheap and dear meaning expensive.
0
May 23, 2022 9:48PM
Steve Tingle
Funny I never have problems with it, but I've only been speaking it since I was two, almost 68 years.
0
Apr 17, 2022 5:40PM
kittycmeowski
Six is religious freedom and thirteen is president.
1
Mar 2, 2022 4:46PM
MRogers
Thomas Begeng, I had the good fortune to have had two very congenial mothers-in-law over the course of 50 years. “It” didn’t apply to either one, but I feel your pain and chuckled when I read it. And for the two down votes you have as of 11-1-21, get a grip. In seven years participating in Quizzclub, I’ve yet to see anything that warranted a down vote.
0
Nov 2, 2021 7:16PM
lls
lls
Wow! This was a lot of cool stuff I hadn't thought about, before!
0
Jun 25, 2021 9:22PM
David Roy
John McManus, away an' boil yer heed!
0
Jul 30, 2020 6:14PM
Ilias Tsiabardas
Very useful information about the English language thank you
0
Jan 23, 2020 9:22PM
lannydw
Chinese is not a language. It's Mandarin or Cantonese, spoken by the Chinese.
1
Oct 2, 2019 4:40PM
Ian Swindale
How do you explain to a foreigner learning English that words like "bough", :cough:, "though" and "through" all end in "ough" but that ending is pronounced differently in each case. I think there are other examples of that ending but as I write this I can't remember them. I am a volunteer English teacher in a Black Township here in South Africa and I know exactly how difficult it is to make the pupils understand that you can have words that look as though they have the same ending but are pronounced differently - their first language before they started with the volunteers is and was isiXhosa. Having said that it is a joy and so rewarding to go to the Township to do this.
0
May 22, 2019 6:15AM
Sandra Mcnamara
Very interesting
0
Apr 26, 2019 3:20AM
Jan Mohamed Shaikh
Interesting & Entertaining
0
Apr 1, 2019 9:00AM
Douglas Oaten
GREAT! I really loved #5
0
Mar 2, 2019 6:46AM
Douglas Oaten
"James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" (It refers to two students, James and John, required by an English test to describe a man who had suffered from a cold in the past. John writes "The man had a cold", which the teacher marks incorrect, while James writes the correct "The man had had a cold". Since James' answer was right, it had had a better effect on the teacher)
0
Mar 2, 2019 6:45AM
Terry Lee Hammel
Very confusing.
0
Feb 14, 2019 1:12AM

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