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نکات جالب در مورد زبان انگلیسی - interesting facts about English

interesting facts about English

29.
A word formed by joining together parts of existing words is called a "blend" (or, less commonly, a "portmanteau word"). Many new words enter the English language in this way. Examples are "brunch" (breakfast + lunch); "motel" (motorcar + hotel); and "guesstimate" (guess + estimate). Note that blends are not the same as compounds or compound nouns, which form when two whole words join together, for example: website, blackboard, darkroom.

30.
The word "alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha, bēta.

31.
The dot over the letter "i" and the letter "j" is called a "superscript dot".

32.
In normal usage, the # symbol has several names, for example: hash, pound sign, number sign.

33.
In English, the @ symbol is usually called "the at sign" or "the at symbol".

34.
If we place a comma before the word "and" at the end of a list, this is known as an "Oxford comma" or a "serial comma". For example: "I drink coffee, tea, and wine."

35.
Some words exist only in plural form, for example: glasses (spectacles), binoculars, scissors, shears, tongs, gallows, trousers, jeans, pants, pyjamas (but note that clothing words often become singular when we use them as modifiers, as in "trouser pocket").

36.
The shortest complete sentence in English is the following. "I am."

37.
The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat" meaning "the king is helpless".

38.
We pronounce the combination "ough" in 9 different ways, as in the following sentence which contains them all: "A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."



39.
The longest English word without a true vowel (a, e, i, o or u) is "rhythm".

40.
The only planet not named after a god is our own, Earth. The others are, in order from the Sun, Mercury, Venus, [Earth,] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

41.
There are only 4 English words in common use ending in "-dous": hazardous, horrendous, stupendous, and tremendous.

42.
We can find 10 words in the 7-letter word "therein" without rearranging any of its letters: the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.