Grammarians, Linguists, Lexicologists, Editors, Writers, & Publishers: Take Note!
Did you know that “R” is the most commonly used consonant in the English language? Were you aware that the term “English” came before the name England? Did you even realize that punctuation did not appear until the 15th century?
I
found a treasure trove of interesting facts in a book that linguists,
lexicologists, book-lovers, grammarians, and those in book publishing should
love. The book is put out by Metro
Books, an imprint of Sterling Publishing, the Barnes & Noble publishing
company. It’s called 501
Things You Should Have Learned About Grammar.
The
discounted paperback featured sections on the history of English grammar, parts
of speech, linguists, English around the world, and grammar through the ages.
I
quote the following 35 items that should entertain, if not stimulate, you:
1. "Shitfaced” meant “young-looking” in the Scottish dictionary. Yes, prior to 1826, shitfaced, according to Scottish dictionary meant small-faced. It referred to someone who had boyish or young looks.
2. Queue”
is the only word in the English language that doesn’t change in pronunciation
if the last four letters are removed!
3. One of the most
interesting facts about words in the English language is that the female form
of all words in English are longer than their corresponding male forms, except
for in one case. The word “widow” is an exception to this. Its male form
“widower” is longer.
4. The oldest word
in the Oxford English dictionary that is still in common use is “town.”
5. Forty is the
only number in which the letters that form appear in the order that they appear
in the English alphabet.
6. One is the only
number in which the letters appear in the exact reverse order of their
appearance in the English alphabet.
7. “Four” is the
only word whose numerical value is equal to the number of letters in it!
8. Pangrams in
English are sentences that contain all the letters in the English alphabet in a
single sentence itself. Pangrams are used for testing typefaces, testing
equipment, and for developing skills such as typing on keyboards, typewriting,
handwriting, and calligraphy. Pangrams which are short and coherent are very
difficult to come by, as English grammar has 26 different letters, and some of
these, such as “q” and “x,” are not used very commonly. There is only
one pangram in English which is short and universally accepted for keyboard
testing. That
pangram—“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”
9. About 20,000
books ranging from poems, devotional pieces, grammar books, dictionaries and
mythical stories were printed in the 150 years that followed the year 1476,
which was when the printing press arrived in England.
10. There are no
masculine nouns for certain professions like maid or seamstress in English.
11. The longest word
in the English language that is commonly used and does not contain any letter
that is repeated is “copyrightable.”
13. China
has more English speaking people than the United States of America!
14. In
the early 18th century, a large number of English words were being
derived from names of people and places.
Many have stuck on till today!
The word “sandwich” owes its existence to the Earl of Sandwich, who, on
a particular occasion, put a slice of meat in between two pieces of bread.
15. Over
80 different spellings of Shakespeare’s name have been documented, and it is
interesting to note that he has used different spellings in all his six known
signatures.
16. The
printing press was first invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439 in
Germany. Each letter’s mirror image was
carved in relief on a small block. Words
were formed when blocks, which were easily movable, were arranged to form
different words. The words were
separated with the help of blank spaces, and this gave rise to a line of type
and a number of such lines of type gave rise to a page.
17. With
the help of some borrowed money, Gutenberg started the “Bible Revolution” in
the year 1452, wherein 200 copies of the two-volume Gutenberg Bible were
printed, out of which only a small number of them were printed on vellum.”
18. By the year 1500, 13 million books were being circulated in Europe that was populated with 100 million people then.
19. The
Gutenberg Bibles were expensive and beautiful, and were sold at the 1455 Frankfurt
Book Fair, where each one was equal to the amount an average clerk got as his
salary in three years. About 50 of these
Bibles survive today.
20. The
written English used in the official documents at the Court of Chancery, a
court of equity in England and Wales, was what set a standard in grammar and
vocabulary, and that’s where the term “Chancery English” originated.
21. Paradise
Lost is amongst the greatest epics eve written in English. And what makes it even more special is the
fact that the author John Milton (who had lost his eyesight by then) would
mentally compose the verses at night and in the morning eh would dictate them
to his aides.
22. The
discovery that English and Sanskrit had much in common, in spite of having
little contact, stunned theorists.
Surprised by the linguistic similarities between disparate languages,
scholars began to hypothesize the existence of an ancient language called the
“proto-Indo-European” language that would alter give rise to the various
branches of the Indo-European group.
23. Language
historians now believe that the speakers of the Proto-Indo-European languages
spread to different parts of the world.
Their language (spoken between 4,000-6,000 years ago) changed with their
travels, leading the original Proto-language to die out, but leaving several
distinguishable elements in the languages that evolved later.
24. Words
and sentences that are made by teaming up letters, numbers, or pictures are
called Rebus. One example that we use in
our day-to-day SMS lingo is “l8r,” which is short for “later.”
25. Spoonerisms
pop up when letters and sounds get misplaced.
Missed becomes hissed, flags becomes hags, so on and so forth.
26. Malapropism:
This term is used to denote the replacement of a correct word with the
incorrect word, because they sound similar.
27. “Puns are often called the lowest form of humor because of their reliance on manipulating the sound of words for effect. These are homophones, where the pun is created by replacing one word with another similar sounding one. For example “Old kings never die, they’re just throne away.
28. An
oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two or more contradictory phrases
that, in sum, express an important relation.
Can you hear the deafening silence at that? If so, act natural.
29. Many
grammarians believe that the process of onomatopoeia – words formed in the
imitation of sounds – was the basis of evolution of words in the human
language. Human beings coined words out
of exclamations they made, or heard animal and birds make, or came across in
their environment. This theory has been
pooh-poohed by others who cite the fact that there are very few words in most
human languages that are onomatopoeic in nature.
30. Book
and movie titles are also retrospectively used as metaphors – that’s a “Catch
22 situation,” “This is such a 1984ish nightmare” or “it’s a Cinderella story.
31. Incidentally,
the English word “alphabet” is made by combining “alpha” and “beta,” the first
two letters of the Greek alphabet.
32. Elizabethan
English refers to the English and the laws of English grammar that existed
during the period of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who was the Queen of
England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603.
33. The
Elizabethan Alphabet had 24 letters, unlike the present day alphabet, which has
26 letters. “u” and “v”, “I” and “j”
were the same letter.
34. After
the writers of the Bible, Shakespeare is the second most quoted writer in the
English language.
35. By
1400, English had replaced French as the most widely spoken language in England. In 1500, the English dialect that became the
most common among all of them was Westminster English. Speaking this dialect was considered to be a
matter of great prestige.
36. A
lot of Norman French words found their way into the English language. In today’s times, it is believed that over
30% of all English words are of French origin.
Words like “joy,” “joyous,” “attaché,” and several others found their
way into English courtesy Norman French.”
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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog © 2015
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