English language as their mother tongue feel almost 400 million people, and as a second language it have more than 1 billion people.However, English is only the third most spoken in the world after Chinese and Spanish.
oldest words in English about 14,000 years, and they come from the Indo-European family of languages Nostratic. These words are the words apple (apal), bad (bad), gold (gold).
vocabulary of the English language is the world's largest and has about 800,000 words. This vocabulary of most English speakers is 12,000 - 20,000 words, and to speak English enough to study 1500 - 2000 words.
Some interesting facts:
• In English, the names of all the continents end with the same letter, which begins.
• According to the Oxford English Dictionary Dictionary longest English word - the word «pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis». It 45 letters.
• Single numeral in English, the number of letters has the same numerical value - the word «four» («four»).
• In English, there are no words that rhyme with the words month, orange, silver or purple .
• The English word slave (slave) is derived from the name of the Slavic tribes.
• The English word slave (slave) is derived from the name of the Slavic tribes. In ancient Germanic Slavic tribes sold captives into slavery by the Romans.
• The most common letter of the alphabet - E, and very rarely used-Q.
• While you are reading this text, 700 million people worldwide are learning English.