Here you will find Interesting Language Facts about 2,700 major languages spoken throughout the world. There are many myth & interesting things related to these languages which you never know. These Facts about Languages are collected to surprise you. Many of the Language Facts are about the most common language in the word and that is English. Tell your friends about these Language Facts and then ask them 'Did you know it', I am sure that the answer will be NO.
The first Oxford English Dictionary was published in April 1928, 50 years after it was started. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest edition fills 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which is available on a single CD or flash drive.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Samuel Johnson completed the first English dictionary in 1755. Apparently Johnson was known for his drinking. On the other hand, Noah Webster, who wrote the famous Webster Dictionary, was known as a short, pale, smug, boastful, humorless, yet religious man. Webster is also accused of crediting himself with coining many words which had been in the language for centuries.
When the Webster dictionary was published in 1828, contemporaries commented that it lacked real knowledge, was full of crudities and errors, and was of little purpose. Webster was not a newcomer to the literary scene. His spelling book, called the Blue-Black Speller because of its binding, was one of the best-selling books of the 19th century. Even so, Webster took a comparatively small royalty advance on his dictionary, expecting it to sell 250,000 copies. He didn't expect that it would go on to sell more than 30 million copies during the next 12 years.
Two of the men who would continue to benefit from Webster's fifty years of labor were Charles and George Merriam, thus the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of today.
Perhaps the most famous dictionary is the Oxford English Dictionary. When the Philological Society of London decided in 1857 to compile the English language, they did not realize the extent of the task. Eventually in 1879, James A H Murray was appointed to gather a group of linguists to further the compilation, estimating that it would consist of 6,400 pages in two volumes. Five years later they had only reached the word 'ant'.
In April 1928, 50 years after it was started, the Oxford English Dictionary was finally published. It consisted of 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes. The latest complete edition covers more than 600,000 words over 22,000 pages, includes 33,000 Shakespeare quotations, and is bound in 20 volumes. All of which, in electronic edition at 540 megabytes big, is also available on a single CD or a single USB memory stick or online.
Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.
Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States!
The Chinese ideogram for 'trouble' depicts two women living under one roof.
