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Friday, December 14, 2007

Fun Facts About Language

• TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using only the letters on the top row of a computer keyboard.

• In ancient Greece the word 'idiot' meant a private citizen or layman.

• The furniture polish "Pledge" means "Piss" in the Netherlands.

• If you were to spell out numbers you would have to get to 1000 before you found the letter "A".

• When the Chevrolet Motor Company tried to introduce the "Nova" car to Spain it wasn't a big seller. "No va" means "Doesn't go" in Spanish.

• In the last 50 years the average working vocabulary of a 15 year old has decreased from 25,000 words to just 10,000 words.

• The longest word that can be typed only with the left hand is 'Stewardesses'.

• The only English word that ends in 'mt' is dreamt.

• The word 'Queue' is the only word in the English language that can be pronounced the same even if the last four letters have been removed one by one.

• There are more English speaking people living in China than there are in the USA!

9 comments:

Deb said...

That was REALLY interesting! Now I don't feel bad when my parnter calls me an idiot!!! ;D

Great little factoids.... no wonder no one wanted to ride in my Nova when I was 16. Hrmm. It usually never did "go".

Anonymous said...

I love little trivial facts like that!

Nova comment #2: my dad bought my mom a Nova for her birthday when I was 5.

Anonymous said...

I knew that about Pledge as I am always saying "Oh piss on that. I'm not dusting."

L Sass said...

So interesting!! My parents had a Nova and I'm pretty sure that it frequently broke down. Heh.

Rachel said...

lol @ "no va."

Jan said...

That was cool..... thanks!

Jan

Wholly Burble said...

Fun--bet you had fun finding all those facts.

Whiskeymarie said...

I had a 1987 Nova. That car ran and ran and ran...
until it didn't.

But I really loved that car.

And I really liked this post.

BipolarLawyerCook said...

I owned a Nova. It did Va, but only at less than 45 mph. Of course, it was a 77 nova, that I owned in 96-97. The fact that it moved at all was the miracle.