The English Alphabet

Do you have an interest in language? Are you a speaker of English? Here, we give you 6 fun facts about the language of Shakespeare.

1. The word alphabet is derived from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta. In turn, these Greek words are derived from the Phoenician aleph and bet , dating earlier than 1050 BC.

2. The English alphabet contains 26 letters, which in turn make up more than 40 unique sounds. As there are many more sounds than letters, many letters have different pronunciations. An example is the h in Hungry versus the H in hour.

3. The dot over the letter “i” is called title.

4. Around 100 languages use what is the modern English alphabet, making is one of the most frequently used alphabets in the world. Some languages have a couple more and others a couple less, all share the 23 core letters originally by the Roman writing system.

5. The technical term for a sentence containing all 26 letters of the English alphabet is called a panagram, the most famous being: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

6. Floccinaucinihilipilification is the longest word in the English language that does not include an E.