Interesting words and languages

  1. The first word spoken on the moon was "okay". (Or not - see comments).
  2. Seoul, the South Korean capital, just means "the capital" in the Korean language.
  3. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.
  4. There are only four common words in the English language which end in "-dous": tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous. There's also annelidous, which you probably won't need - ever (unless you're a biologist (see comments).
  5. The "you are here" arrow on maps is called an ideo locator.
  6. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.
  7. The symbol on the "pound" key (#) is called an octothorpe.
  8. The symbol used in many URLs (Web addresses) is called a tilde. (~)
  9. The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
  10. In English, "four" is the only digit that has the same number of letters as its value.
  11. Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States.
  12. The word "trivia" comes from the Latin "trivium" which is the place where three roads meet, a public square. People would gather and talk about all sorts of matters, most of which were trivial.
  13. TYPEWRITER, is the longest word that can be made using the letters only one row of the keyboard.
  14. "Speak of the Devil" is short for "Speak of the Devil and he shall come". It was believed that if you spoke about the Devil it would attract his attention. That's why when you're talking about someone and they show up people say "Speak of the Devil".
  15. The word "Checkmate" in chess comes from the Persian phrase "Shah Mat," which means, "the King is dead".
  16. Only three words have entered English from Czech: polka, pilsner, and robot.
  17. The sentence "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.
  18. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.
  19. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.
  20. The longest word in the English language, according to the Oxford English Dictionary is:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
  21. The only other word with the same amount of letters as it is its plural:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses.
  22. The longest non-medical word in the English language is FLOCCINAUCINIHILIPILIFICATION, which means "the act of estimating as worthless".
  23. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is "screeched."
  24. The longest place-name still in use is:-'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturi
    pukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwe-nuakit natahu' it is the Maori name of a hill in New Zealand.
  25. The longest place name in the UK is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, it means The name means: "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool and the church of St Tysilio of the red cave".
  26. The longest word in the Old Testament is "Malhershalahashbaz".
  27. Mafia in Old Arabic means 'sanctuary'.
  28. Some long running myths say that a pregnant goldfish is called a prat, twit, twat and twerp. The correct word is actually "gravid"which describes the conditon of a female livebearing fish when carrying young internally.
  29. Karaoke means 'empty orchestra' in Japanese.
  30. The first message tapped by Samuel Morse over his invention the telegraph was: "What hath God wraught?"
  31. The first words spoken by over Alexander Bell over the telephone were: "Watson, please come here. I want you.
  32. The first words spoken by Thomas Edison over the phonograph were: "Mary had a little lamb."
  33. "Papaphobia" is the fear of Popes.
  34. The Academy Award statue is named after a librarian's uncle. One day Margaret Herrick, librarian for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, made a remark that the statue looked like her Uncle Oscar, and the name stuck.
  35. The three words in the English language with the letters "uu" are: vacuum, residuum and continuum.
  36. "Underground" is the only word in English that begins and ends with the letters "und."
  37. A baby in Florida was named: Truewilllaughinglifebuckyboomermanifestdestiny. His middle name is George James.
  38. 'Dreamt' is the only English word that ends in the letters 'mt'.
  39. The word 'Bye' is used in both English and Spanish meaning the same thing.
  40. "Pogonophobia" is the fear of beards.
  41. In Chinese, the words crisis and opportunity are the same. (Or not - see comments)
  42. The infinity character on the keyboard is called a "lemniscate".
  43. The valediction (thanks Erik) 'good bye' came from God bye which came from God be with you.
  44. So-long came from the Arabic salaam and the Hebrew shalom.
  45. The word 'nerd' was first coined by Dr. Seuss in 'If I ran the Zoo'.
  46. Before Jets, Jet lag was called Boat lag.
  47. The word "monosyllable" actually has five syllables in it.
  48. There are no words in the English language that rhyme with month, silver, purple or orange.
  49. The letter "n" ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel.
  50. It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.
  51. 'Zorro' means 'fox' in Spanish.
  52. The verb "to cleave" has definitions which are antonyms of each other: to adhere and to separate.
  53. The verb "sanction" also has definitions which are antonyms: to sponsor and to ban.
  54. You won’t find a "6" in Cameroon phone numbers--the native language has no sound for "x.
  55. "The only 15-letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is "uncopyrightable."
  56. There is a seven-letter word in English that contains eleven words without rearranging any of its letters, "therein": the, there, he, in, rein, her, here, ere, I, therein, herein.
  57. Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels.
  58. "Go." is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.
  59. The word "set" has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
  60. There is a word in the English language with only one vowel, which occurs five times: "indivisibility."
  61. Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them would burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired." I wonder what "To get sacked" refers to?
  62. The word "queue" is the only word in the English language that is still pronounced the same way when the last four letters are removed.
  63. The letter most in use in the English language is "E" and the letter "Q" is least used.
  64. "Four" is the only number whose number of letters in the name equals the number.
  65. This sentence has thirty seven letters in it.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this over time. :)

117 comments:

Anonymous said...

what is the proper pronounciation of the words: golf and medicine?

Your Teacher said...

I've recorded them for you:-

Golf

Medicine

Anonymous said...

There are at least 4 pairs of repeated statements in that list.

Anonymous said...

north america and south america don't star and end with the same letter???

Anonymous said...

star=start

Anonymous said...

First item is wrong, I won't bother reading the rest. The first word spoken on the mood was "Contact", not "okay".


Ref: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3897/is_200412/ai_n9469601

Paul said...

My students in Taiwan insist that North and South America are one continent...but come to think of it, some of those same (adult) students didn't know how many legs a spider has.

Anonymous said...

"The letter "n" ends all Japanese words not ending in a vowel."

That's like saying that any English word that doesnt end in a vowel ends in a consonant.

Anonymous said...

psychosis (singular)
psychoses (plural)

Anonymous said...

crisis
crises

Chouchan said...

Since "n" is the only sound in Japanese that can occur without a vowel, "n" is the only consonant that a Japanese word can end in. Where as, in English a word can end in any number of consonants.

Anonymous said...

Well according to Wiki the first word spoken on the moon was "Houston".

Anonymous said...

North America starts with N and South America starts with S.

Anonymous said...

North and South America are often considered a single continent (America).

Anonymous said...

"A pregnant goldfish is called a twit."

Justin D said...

Not to be redundant, but:

Goose, Geese
Fish, Fish

Quietly said...

the first one may've been wrong, but to opt out of enjoying the rest seems awfully silly. and then to bother telling you? hm.

nice list- thank you :) i will, no doubt, be quoting and posting several of these for the next several days. got to have something to say at the thanksgiving table...

Anonymous said...

i read in reader's digest that "to get the sack" refers to the days when workers would carry their tools in a sack. thus, if they were sent home, they were passed a sack to carry their tools away in. :D

Your Teacher said...

Gracious me. What a lot of activity. Nice to see some of you are having fun. :-) I have removed the one repetition I found, if you could point out the other three I would be very grateful. The old eyes aren't what they used to be.

Thanks for the get the sack info, whoever you are. It sounds believable.

Quietly - you're welcome - Happy Thanksgiving.

Anonymous said...

three words in english came from czech? I would like to correct it somewhat: 'pilsner' comes from town Plzen in german Pilsen so pilsner comes from the greman name rather than the czech one. However the word 'pistol' originated in czech as 'pistala'.

Mark said...

"Bye" is not native to the Spanish language. It is word borrowed from English.

Your Teacher said...

Ah but when Spanish songs come out called Bye Bye (see below) it is so well integrated as to be native. Unless they're going to give it back that is.

http://www.last.fm/music/Steve/_/Bye+Bye+%28Spanish+version%29

Anonymous said...

You can't count North and South America as one "America" if you don't count Europe and Asia as one "Eurasia"... either way, it's broken.

Anonymous said...

K so, the north and south in america dont realy count, its america that is the money word. and come on, when it comes to the japanese words ending in N. it may be the 'only' way they can end but is it something that you would have known? its an interesting fact. C'mon, quit reading into everything and enjoy it. And honestly, of all of these that i have looked at on the internet, this one has the most accurate information. a lot of these sites are based on peoples personal experience and local situations. like one place was picking apart TC shows where the bell rings before class but in 'real life it rings when u are late' which is school based i would assume, we always had one before and one after. =o) any way. nice list i enjoyed it.

Anonymous said...

"Arduous" endet ebenfalls auf -ous.

Anonymous said...

hey teacher,

whats a purple nurple?

Fat Guy in Racine said...

Regarding the comment about Seoul (relevance to English?), but Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, also means "capital" in Kazakh.

Your Teacher said...

Just don't forget to read the title of this blog. :-p

Your Teacher said...

Quote "Arduous" endet ebenfalls auf -ous."

But not in dous. :-)

Your Teacher said...

Definition of "purple nurple" and other such delightful things can be found here:-

http://www.urbandictionary.com

David, Helen & Emma said...

points 4 & 40 are the same - words ending in -dous. Enjoyed reading the list though, good work!

Anonymous said...

I'd heard that "canada" came from a spanish explorer. When asked what he saw there, he said "I saw.....Nada".

I think it was a clue on jeopardy, where I heard that.

Your Teacher said...

Oops Thanks D, H and E.

And now I wish I knew someone from Canada. LOL

Anonymous said...

hmmmm.........
Which American state has the letter Z in it?

Anonymous said...

I am from Canada, and canada really means "village".

Anonymous said...

Lots of errors in this list.

#1 is incorrect. The first word spoken on the moon was "Contact," not "Okay."

#3 is incorrect. The statement that all continents start and end with the same letter is obviously false.

Even if we accept one of the 5- or 6-continent models that group North America and South America into a single continent called America, all of these continent models have either "Europe," "Eurasia" or "Laurasia."

At any rate, since the vast majority of English speaking countries teach the 7-continent model which separates North and South America, claim #3 is not only false but obviously so.

#4 is incorrect. Those are not the only English words ending in "-dous." The word annelidous may be uncommon, but it is nonetheless an English word. Annelidous means: characteristic of the phylum Annelida.

That's 3 out of the first 4 incorrect, and incorrect in ways that anyone could have verified with a simple Google search. Shamefully lazy, wouldn't you agree?

Anonymous said...

Arizona

Anonymous said...

in the south/north issue, perhaps we should inquire about the One China motto...kinda surprise taiwan students these days think of only one america...

more than ample words in rhyming with those poor-proven maliciuos words like orange lag...

Anonymous said...

This whole continent debate seems to revolve around whether or not America can be broken up into North or South. Why not look at the more obvious example of Oceania? Oceania is readily interchangeable with Australia and all you now need to do is to pick and choose what you want to call the continents to suit your purpose.
Then, of course, whoever actually "named" the continents probably did this on purpose - which doesn't make it quite so amazing in hindsight.

Darklighter said...

Um, can't you guys just be simplistic about the continent coincidence?
I remember back in grade school i first learned about:

America
Africa
Asia
Europe
Antartica

If you wanna be anal yea, you can separate america in north and south, you can bitch about eurasia, though no one ever calls it that because of how diverse and large it would make that "one" continent. When's the last time anyone called australia, oceania, come on people. In simple english, the names start and end with the same letters, and really quit bitching because this isn't worth the 5 minutes i put into it.

Anonymous said...

It was, because you just made me smile. :-)

Anonymous said...

A brief history on the origin of the word Canada

According to my Canadian Oxford English Dictionary, Canada comes from the Iroquian word kanata, which means "cluster of dwellings" or "village". The story goes that there was a miscommunication between early European explorers and the Iroquois. The Iroquois were talking about the village but the explorers thought that were talking about the country.

Anonymous said...

Re:your #41, "crisis and opportunity" in Chinese, is just a popular myth without any ground.
Please refer to:
http://www.pinyin.info/chinese/crisis.html

Cheers

Anonymous said...

there are only 2 words in the English language with all 5 vowels (ignoring "Y") in order (a,e,i,o,u)

facetious and......

does any one know the other one?

Your Teacher said...

There's abstentious, which means, not indulging an appetite especially for food or drink. There's also aerious, which means "airy", but I've never seen it in common use.

I think there are a few more, but they are so obscure ...

Oh and turn them into adverbs, with the suffix -ly, and you get all six.

Your Teacher said...

Ref # 41 - that's a shame.

Ref - Canada - now that is interesting.

Anonymous said...

Actually, the continent Oceania... well, it's self explanatory.

Anonymous said...

About "South America" and "North America" (what's the problem with "Central America") are not continents, but an arbitrary division of the continent called "America".

Anonymous said...

The goldfish memory being 3 seconds is a myth. However the fact that the world traditionally is divided into 5 continents may indicate that the 3 second memory is relevant elsewhere

Anonymous said...

"only other word with the same amount of letters as its plural is:- pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconioses"

Or anything ending in -sis
Hypothesis

Sheep, buffalo, deer, fish etc...


Bookkeeper - three successive double letters in a word.

Davey said...

re: 6. The dot over the letter 'i' is called a tittle.

Is the line in the t called a tattle
(tittle tattle)?

Anonymous said...

In reference to the plurals of words that end in -is...

The statement did not say that the only word with the same amount of letter as it's plural... it was a two parter... It was referring to the long word that I'm not reposting here. AND the only other word that was THAT long was the plural of THAT word.

How about you read what was posted before you start getting all high and mighty about it. In the end, you are the one that looks like an idiot, not the poster of this blog... WHICH I found to be interesting and fun. Just enjoy learning some trivial information.

Anonymous said...

Amen!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I've never seen so many people get so hetup about a few words! I really enjoy reading things like this and that's all it's there for...fun!! Lighten up people, or failing that, get a life :) x

Your Teacher said...

Oh don't fall out! This is, as Anonymous (I'm sure I know you) said, just for fun.

Just remember - “Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap” George Bernard Shaw


Davey - I like it. If it isn't called that, well it should be. Unfortunately I think it's just called a "cross stroke".

tyler w said...

So much arguing; it's just that we're all from different parts of the world and have received or are receiving different educations. I learned of North America and South America, with Central America being part of North America, and hadn't heard of Oceania until 1984 and in that it isn't even referring to Australia. (The book I've just recently read, not the year seven years before my birth.)

Anonymous said...

"Rhythms" is a longer word that contains no vowels.

Anonymous said...

"Dialogue" has all the vowels in it. And there's the name, Sequoia, though I'm not sure that counts.

jd said...

The list includes "dreamt" as the only English word ending in "mt". What about "unkempt"?

Anonymous said...

silver rhymes with river duh...

anno said...

But "unkempt" ends in "mPt".... and silver does not rhyme with river. At least not where I am from.

Anonymous said...

Rilver would rhyme with silver.

Anonymous said...

wow... i'm speechless.

Anonymous said...

Teacher is saying that the only other word as long as the previous one is its plural! Not that it is the only word the same length as its plural!

Your Teacher said...

Re Rilver - I'm not sure if slang that no one has ever heard of counts.

Your Teacher said...

Re Rhythms - remind me not to play Scrabble with you. ;-)

Anonymous said...

The point was, the only was river would rhyme with silver is if it was rilver... and that's not a word

Anonymous said...

j/k:

Canada got it's name by pulling letters out of a hat:

See, eh? Enn eh? Dee eh?

if I was ever to rhyme silver in a song, I'd prolly choose the name wilbur, they sound phonetically close, although, like River, not exact.
Nice list Teacher.

Anonymous said...

I think only 2 people know what the first words on the moon were... They had a pretty tough landing so for all we know it could have been "holy *#%&$!!" Does anyone know if their radio was kept on all the time or did they have to push a button to transmit?

linguistics student said...

I'd argue that 'silver' and 'pilfer' could be legitimately considered rhymes, as the only real difference is whether the labiodental fricative is voiced (v) or unvoiced (f) - they both occur at the same point of articulation.
A worthy list of language trivia in any case.

Your Teacher said...

Actually the word "rilver" does appear in an online dictionary of slang. Allegedly it means someone with a dirty mind. But I have never seen it in a "proper" dictionary, well not yet anywon. LOL

Your Teacher said...

I love the idea of what they might have said when they landed. ROTFL

As for pilfer and silver - not for a British poet. I shall record them to prove my point.

Anonymous said...

goldfish don't get pregnant, they lay eggs.

so you don't need a name for something that dosn't exist

Your Teacher said...

Very true. I had meant to update this but forgot. It is now done.

Anonymous said...

In re: 36. You mean, of course, not including under which also starts with und. That doesn't include words like undaunted, of course, or undanceable. Also, more technical terms such as undae (sand dunes) are not included either. Oh, I almost forgot undecillion (1 followed by 36 or 66 zeroes, depnding which side of the pond you live on).

But other than those, you are quite right. Of course except ... oh, both. Perhaps you should just take that one out of there ...

Your Teacher said...

I don't think you understand - begins and ends with und.

:-)

Anonymous said...

Subbookkeeper - four doubles!

Anonymous said...

subbookkeeper - four doubles.

Anonymous said...

no such word as pronounciation - kick out the redundant "o".

White Duck said...

Very good read =) just a few things to note especially if you like scrabble..

#3- First of all, quit your whining about the continents, it's trivial..

And for those who'd like to extend what they have learnt from this cool fact page =)-

#4- Amadous, apodous, decapodous , hazardous, horrendous, iodous, nodous, nonhazardous, palladous, stupendous, tremendous, ultrahazardous, vanadous

#10- Another interesting thing about numbers and their spellings- an anagram of "one plus twelve" is "two plus eleven"

#23- Here are some other 9 letter one syllable words =) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of
_the_longest_English_words_with_one_
syllable

#35- Continuum/s, duumvir/ate/s, duumviri or rs, menstruum/s, *muumuu/s, residuum/s, squush/ed or es or ier or iest or ing or y, triduum/s, ultravacuum/s, vacuum/ed or ing or s, weltanschauung/en

#36- Underfund

#38- Daydreamt, dreamt, outdreamt, redreamt, undreamt

#40- LOL Pognophobia.. Lano and Woodley :P

#57- Tsktsks and Rythyms are acceptle scrabble words, each 7 letters with no vowels.

Thanks for the read, I always enjoy learning new things, and I hope you have learnt some too =)

White Duck said...

It would seem that on further study, I have found some 10 letter monosyllabic words- STRENGTHED, STREYNGTHE, SCHMALTZED, STREIGHTES, STREINGHTS, and STREITCHED.

Also, for anonymous, a town in Australia- WOOLLOOMMOOLOO has 5 successive double letters and a back hook of double letters. =)

Some more nonrepeating letter words-
SUBDERMATOGLYPHIC (17; not found in any dictionary, but occurring in an article in Annals of Dermatology), MISCONJUGATEDLY (15), DERMATOGLYPHICS (15; Stedman's Electronic Medical Dictionary)

^ These and other nonsense double letter words found at http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words4.html another interesting read.

A town in the Blue Mountains of Australia- Faulconbridge has half the alphabet with no letters repeated. Not as impressive as some other place names listed, but 13 is still pretty impressive.

Anonymous said...

You guys have it wrong about where Canada got its name, but the method was the same ...

It was 3 explorers sitting around a campfire, discussing what to call this new land they had discovered.

The first one said, I think it should have a C, eh?

The second said, Ya, and and N, eh?

The third, And and a D, eh?

;)

Anonymous said...

"11. Q is the only letter in the alphabet that does not appear in the name of any of the United States."

that's why they invaded iraQ...

Anonymous said...

"3. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with."

Incorrect, Australia is the name of the country. The continent itself is called Oceania.

Laynie said...

Sliver rhymes with river. :-)

This was fun to read.

Your Teacher said...

Sorry, river rhymes with liver, giver, shiver, but not silver (remember I'm British). I shall record them for you.

Glad you enjoyed! I love some of the stuff people have added.

White Duck said...

Go The Blues Brothers... And LOTR!!! =D

Anonymous said...

Point #54 claims there is no 6 in the Cameroon phone book because there is no "x" sound in the language.

This point is suspect as the "x" sound is not used to represent six in all languages.

Spanish: seises
Dutch: zes
German: sechs

and so on and so forth. Furthermore, many times roman characters are used to spell a word, but with different pronunciation in that local language, example: French for six: six, but pronounced similar to the English "cease" as in cease and desist.

Elena said...

In regard to the pregnant goldfish: In my language (Norwegian) the word 'gravid' simply means 'pregnant' :)

Christelle said...

Whoa... I enjoyed reading the comments almost as much as I enjoyed the post!

Had to LOL quite a few times...

Your Teacher said...

Well it just shows you - you can have fun with English. :-)

Anonymous said...

great list, i found it really interesting.
my only issue with the continent debate is when did Australia become Oceania? no issue with NZ, fiji or the solomons etc being part of it, but a) technically the continent is Australia/Oceania and it was called Australia for at least a couple of centuries. its the only continent that encompasses a single state!

and shakespeare was the first person to use the word 'eye-ball'

the term - the 'upper crust' (upper classes) comes from the tudor preiod. Henry VIII would only ever eat the upper crust from loaves of bread, a practice his court then adopted!

Anonymous said...

I know Australia isn't a continent, but I thought the name of the continent containing Australia was Australasia. So still beginning and ending with "A".

vipin said...

some other words with all the five vowels are tenacious, modus-operandi, pneumonia, pseudopodia

Anonymous said...

Dreamt is the only english word that ends in 'mt'

Anonymous said...

This was a great list of interesting facts! This is great! Thanks!

Me, obviously said...

The name of the continent containing Australia is called 'Oceania', not 'Australasia'.

Also, 'bye' is now used in most languages in the same way as English, including Japanese. And Chinese even writes it in text-speak as '8181', which is pronounced 'ba-yi-ba-yi' (say it fast!).

Anonymous said...

About the continents argument: Eurafrasia

I mean, if you can't differentiate the Americas, then you have to tie in Europe, Asia, *and* Africa together, as they are all naturally connected.

Anonymous said...

Great List, I love all these odd facts. I wondered if you wanted to post one I heard a while back. One day my dad told me to "mind my p's and q's" at my aunts house. I said I would, then thought about how I would mind my these constanants... I asked my dad what that meant and he said I knew what he meant. I did know that he was telling me to behave myself. A few weeks later I saw a clip on T.V. that told about bar maids in scotland(I think?) telling the patrons to "Mind thier pints and quarts." I called my dad and told him the meaning of the phrase, then assured him Aunt Cathy and I only had a few.

otto roberts said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjtJ3GTT5ms
tough to tell, but could be 'contact', though he does say 'okay'. First word on the moon, from the lunar lander.

Will said...

Not true at all...
Hypothesis and Hypotheses? They're the same amount of letters.

Brian said...

North AmericA
South AmericA

marimuffin said...

There's also the word annelidous for the words that end in -dous

Mehr Stranden said...

They didn't mean the that it's the only word whose plural has the same ammount of letters.

They meant that the only word that has the same amount of letters as THAT word is ITS plural.

EriktheRed said...

"Good bye" is a valediction, not a salutation, because it's said at leaving instead of greeting.

Your Teacher said...

Wow Erik! I could do with you on the forum. :)

Your Teacher said...

Thanks Marimuffin.

Annelidous - Of or pertaining to annelids.

Annelid - relating to or belonging to or characteristic of any worms of the phylum Annelida

Phylum - (biology) the major taxonomic group of animals and plants.

Taxonomy - the practice and science of classification. The word finds its roots in the Greek τάξις, taxis (meaning 'order', 'arrangement') and νόμος, nomos ('law' or 'science').

Hmm. I think I'd better stop now.

Kukulsa said...

Looks like a lot of people in North a
America doesn't know what a continent is. The continent is America. If people from North America thinks they live in a different continent, they are very very very wrong.

Kevin said...

Cameroon doesn't have any phone numbers with six because they don't have the 'x' sound?

1. Their native language has no word at all for the number 'six'?

2. 'X' is nothing but the letters k and s put together. And sometimes g and z. But which sound don't they have?

Rod Moore said...

Rhythm and syzygy do have vowels. They have the vowel "y".

Brian said...

The word seoul in korean language does not mean capital. the word for the capital city is su-do. 수도. didnt read the rest of those facts but i imagine there are plenty other mistakes

Brian said...

i stand corrected. the rest of the entries seem well thought out. on a side note to my earlier comment. a korean would only use the word seoul as a term for the capital in a figurative sense, like saying Washington DC is the London of America.

What if? said...

Hi Darklighter
You forgot AUSTRALIA.
Cheers from Downunder

Billy Grasmeder said...

words with antonyms for their definitions are called contranyms! :D

Bobby said...

"Rhythm" and "syzygy" are the longest English words without vowels. -- Only according to the rules of the game Scrabble, which (incorrecly) counts "y" as a consonant all the time. In fact, "y" is normally a vowel, as it clearly is in these 2 words. This "fact" is relevant in getting a high Scrabble score, but in reality both these words most certainly contain the vowel "y". There are true vowel-free words in English, such as "nth".

As far as the continents go, any plate-tetonics scientist will let you know that the Americas are definitely 2 continents, on separate plates that happened to have collided some time ago, joined by a tiny stretch of land (as is Asia and Africa). And, Europe and Asia are 1 continent (Eurasia), not 2. The preponderance of place names that begin and end with the same letter is interesting, but you have to bend scientific fact to the breaking point to claim that all continents begin and end with the same letter. It is amazing to read some of the comments by naive people who are really convinced that whatever they happened to have learned as "facts" about the continents in school must be true, otherwise they've been mistaken all these years, and that just can't be!!!

Marik said...

just a note- i know this is a British blog, and all, but in American english, the double r in "squirrel" is not stressed, making it a single syllable... and making "squirreled" the longest monosyllabic word in *american* english - ten letters as opposed to "screeched" having nine.

useless to the UK readers, but I'm sure that some Americans read this too, due to stumble. =)

Your Teacher said...

And if you're Jonathan Ross it's a "squiwwel". ;-)