Learning English is not just about vocabulary or grammar. It also helps to know a bit of its history and some of its quirks.
We've prepared this short list of fun facts about the English language for you.
1. English is a language that came from Europe, specifically the area that is now is now northwest Germany, west Denmark, and the Netherlands.
English originated from the dialects brought by Anglo-Saxon settlers to Britain. According to Oxford Dictionaries, 96 out of the 100 most common English words are Germanic.
2. English is the only major language that has no organization overseeing it. French, for example, has L'Académie française, while Spanish has Real Academia Española.
There doesn't seem to be any plans to put one up anytime soon--even if there are over 1 billion people around the world learning English.
3. English is the language used by all pilots, regardless of nationality. This is true for air traffic controllers as well.
This rule was introduced by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2008 for safety reasons when they found out that many plane crashes were caused by communication problems.
4. The shortest words in English are "I" and "a."
Many people claim that the longest word is "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis," but according to Oxford Dictionaries, it's an invented word that refers to a lung disease caused by inhaling dust that is usually found in volcanos.
5. A sentence that contains all the letters of the English alphabet is called a pangram.
The most popular pangram is "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog."
6. English gets an average of 4,000 new words a year. Many dictionaries have around 200,000 to 500,000 entries.
But don’t worry! Experts say that you need to know only 1,000 to 2,000 to be able to have basic conversations in English!
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