Why the Alphabet is So Rad (+ some things you may not know about letters)
Obviously my job consists of working with letters aaaaaaalllll day long. I like letters. Here's some fun facts about our English alphabet you may not know!
The English word alphabet comes (via Latin) from the names of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: alpha and beta.
About 100 languages use the same alphabet like in English which makes it one of the most widely used alphabets in the world. While some languages have a few more and others a few less, they all share the 23 core letters originally found in the Roman alphabet.
The 26 letters in the English alphabet combine to create over 470,000 words, according to Webster's dictionary.
The most commonly used letter from the English alphabet is E. One in eight of all the letters written in English is ‘e’.
A sentence which contains all 26 letters of the English alphabet is called a pangram. You have likely heard the famous pangram“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Or this shorter version “Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.”
If you try to say the alphabet without moving your lips or tongue, most of the letters will sound the same! Tee hee. Did you know that?
The sound we say when we say a letter is called its name. For the most part this makes sense. But what is up with H? Aitch? Haitch? Aitch? Which one is it?
The letter W is the only letter in our alphabet that has 3 syllables (all others have 1). And why is it called a 'Double-U' anyways? It's clearly two Vs!
The dot over the letter “i” is called title.
Oh, and a fun fact about me? I can say the alphabet backwards! Can you? Give it a try!
