ENGLISH- Sometimes it doesn't make any sense.

Verbally Insane

We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,  but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes.  One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,  yet the plural of moose should never be meese.  You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, yet the plural of house is houses, not hice. If the plural of man is always called men,  why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen?  If I spoke of my foot and show you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?  If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth?  Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose,  and the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren.  Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim.  Let's face it - English is a crazy language.  There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger;  neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England. We take English for granted.  But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that  quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square,  and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers  don't groce and hammers don't ham?  Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not  one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?  If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?  If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?  Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane.  In what other language do people recite at a play and  play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship. We have noses that run and feet that smell. And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same,  while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?   You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down,  in which you fill in a form by filling it out,  and in which an alarm goes off by going on.  So if Dad is Pop, how come Mom isn't Mop? And I've often wondered: How come we park in a driveway and drive on  a parkway? Makes no sense!

How to spell the word "POTATO"

How to spell "Potato"			- back to top
If GH can stand for P as in Hiccough If OUGH can stand for O as in Dough If PHTH can stand for T as in Phthisis If EIGH can stand for A as in Neighbor If TTE can stand for T as in Gazette If EAU can stand for O as in Plateau Then the right way to spell POTATO should be: GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU - author unknown.

A cool scrap from Orkut!!!!

Luiz:

Óia só o e-mail que eu mandei pra TOOOOODA a Rapp:

Título:

Legítimo escocês por uma pechincha!!!

texto:

Desculpem o título sensacionalista, mas é que trata-se de uma oportunidade de ouro exclusiva para rappers:

Douglas Watson, escocês legítimo das Highlands de Inverness e excelente professor da língua de Shakespeare, preparou uma promoção imperdível para os rappers que quiserem aprender ou aprimorar seu inglês.

São aulas de gramática, pronunciação, conversação, inglês para viagem e muito mais, individuais ou em grupos, com preços excelentes.

Ah! E a primeira aula é grátis! Ligue e agende a sua:

8787-7299

msn: dougteacher@hotmail.comhttp://www.dougteacher.blogspot.com/

The English Language.

What are the world's most widely spoken languages?

Estimates of how many people speak a language can never be completely precise and therefore vary considerably. However, English English com, together with World English, have come up with the following figures: Mandarin Chinese (837,000,000), English (370,000,000), Spanish (300,000,000), Bengali (189,000,000), Hindi/Urdu (182,000,000), Arabic (174,950,000), Portuguese (170,000,000), Russian (170,000,000), Japanese (125,000,000), German (98,000,000), Javanese (79,000,000), French (75,000,000)

In which countries is English an official language?

English is officially spoken in: Anguilla, Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Belau, Bermuda, Botswana, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Antigua, Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bhutan, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cameroon, Cook Islands, Dominica, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Gibraltar, Grenada, Guam, Guyana, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Jersey, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Malaysia, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Micronesia, Midway Islands, Montserrat, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, New Zealand, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Pitcairn, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, St Helena, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Swaziland, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tuvalu, US Virgin Islands, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States, Vanuatu, Wake Island, Western Samoa, Zambia, Zambia, Zimbabwe 

I
How many people speak English as a second language?

The number of people believed to speak English as a second language is around 375 million.

So how many speak English in total?

One out of every five people on earth can speak English to some level of competence.

How many people are learning English worldwide?

More than a billion people are in the process of learning the English language.

What percentage of the internet is in English?

More than 80% of home pages on the Web are in English, while the next greatest, German, has only 4.5% and Japanese 3.1%.

Which language has the most words?

English has more words than most comparable world languages.

How many words are there in the English language?

This is an impossible question to answer! It really depends on what words you want to count. But there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary. The unabridged Oxford English Dictionary has about 600,000.

How many words does the average native speaker know?

This depends on the speakers level of education, background etc. but somewhere between 12,000 and 20,000. Shakespeare used more than 30,000 words in his works!  

How many words does the average native speaker use in everyday speech?

The average native speaker of any language uses around a tenth of his vocabulary in everyday speech. In other words, around 1200 to 2000. 

How many words do you need to learn in order to communicate in most situations?

A vocabulary of between 1500 to 2000 words should be enough for most circumstances. The more you know the better because even though you can control the words you use, you can't control the other person. Because of this, you need to learn more words to understand well than you need to speak well. 

What is the longest word in the English language?

The longest word in popular usage is ANTIDISESTABLISHMENTARIANISM (a movement opposed to the separation of church and state) at 28 letters.

The 45 letter word PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS (a lung disease caused by breathing in certain particles) also appears in many English dictionaries. However, as it's use is strictly medical or scientific, some may not consider this truely part of the English language. 

Dancing Cockatoo

Interesting Facts

1. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”

2. “Dreamt” is the only English word that ends in the letters “mt”

3. Almonds are members of the peach family.

4. The symbol on the “pound” key (#) is called an octothorpe.

5. The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.

6. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.

7. The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.

8. “Underground” is the only word in the English language that begins and ends with the letters “und.”

9. There are only four words in the English language which end in “-dous”: tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous.

10. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.

11. The only other word with the same amount of letters is its plural: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosesl.

12. The longest place-name still in use is
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu, a New Zealand hill.

13. Los Angeles’s full name is “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reinade los Angeles de Porciuncula” and can be abbreviated to 3.63% of its size,L.A.

14. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain.

15. Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.

16. Alfred Hitchcock didn’t have a belly button. It was eliminated when he was sewn up after surgery.

17. Telly Savalas and Louis Armstrong died on their birthdays.

18. Donald Duck’s middle name is Fauntleroy.

19. The muzzle of a lion is like a fingerprint - no two lions have the same pattern of whiskers.

20. A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

21. There is a seven-letter word in the English language that contains ten words without rearranging any of its letters, “therein”: the,there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, therein, herein.

22. Dueling is legal in Paraguay as long as both parties are registered blood donors.

23. A goldfish has a memory span of three seconds.

24. It’s impossible to sneeze with your eyes open.

25. Cranberries are sorted for ripeness by bouncing them; a fully ripened cranberry can be dribbled like a basketball.

26. The letters KGB stand for Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti

26. ‘Stewardesses’ is the longest English word that is typed with only the left hand.

28. The combination “ough” can be pronounced in nine different ways; the following sentence 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.”

29. The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.

30. Facetious and abstemious contain all the vowels in the correct order, as does arsenious, meaning “containing arsenic.”

31. Emus and kangaroos cannot walk backwards, and are on the Australian seal for that reason.

32. Cats have over one hundred vocal sounds, while dogs only have about ten.

33. The word “Checkmate” in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah Mat,” which means “the king is dead.”