3 Fascinating Facts About the English Language

January 4th is celebrated in the United States as National Trivia Day. To mark this fact-filled day, we've rounded up some interesting tidbits of information about English:

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English is arguably the richest in vocabulary of all the world's languages. Although it is impossible to count exactly how many English words are in existence, Oxford Dictionary infers that English may have more words compared to other languages. This is mostly due to the historical ties of English to Dutch, German, French, and Latin.

Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash.

The most commonly used letter in the English alphabet is 'E'. It would be hard to write a whole sentence without using the fifth letter of the English alphabet. Interestingly, it's also the most frequently used letter in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Hungarian, Finnish, Danish, and Latin according to letterfrequency.org. Whew! Take extra care of the letter 'E' on your keyboard!

If you speak English as your first language, you're in good company! 400 million people use English as a mother tongue. If you're studying English as a foreign language, you can say you belong to the world's largest class with 700 million global citizens as your classmates! English is truly the lingua franca of the modern world.

Now that you know some trivia about English, it's time to get to know the language on an even deeper level. Challenge yourself to master the four core skills of listening, reading, writing, and speaking. Take our FREE online English test to determine your proficiency level!

To schedule a FREE consultation with Elite's program coordinators, click HERE.

Happy Trivia Day!