Joy Joy's Jabber: 9 Things You Didn't Know About the English Language

The English language is notorious for its convoluted nature and snooty attitude. Really, we don’t need all 600,000 words or all those silly rules that everyone ignores anyway. If I want to end a sentence with a preposition, I will end a sentence with.

Yes, English is silly, but I love it and all its endearing (and oftentimes annoying) quirks. Take a look at some of those quirks and get better acquainted with your mother tongue.

The ampersand was the 27^th letter of the alphabet. The symbol itself is more than a thousand years old, but it only received its modern name in the 1800s. When children recited the alphabet, they ended it with “and per say and,” which over time became “ampersand.”
The word “checkmate” owes its existence to the Persian phrase “shah mat,” which means, “the king is helpless."
The fun little dot over “I” and “j” is called a “superscript dot” or a “tittle.”
“Bookkeeper” and “bookkeeping” are the only unhyphenated words in English with 3 consecutive sets of double letters.
We pronounce “ough” in 9 different ways.
Want a challenge? Write a lipogram, a piece of work that does not contain the letter “e.”
The longest word in which all the letters are in alphabetical order is “almost.”
Estimates vary about just how many words dear old Bill Shakespeare invented (depending on how you define “a new word”), but it was bucketfuls. We owe words like “champion,” “courtship,” “assassination,” and “hint” to the Bard.
“Enormity” and “ironic” are both commonly misused words. Enormity refers to something evil or outrageous. Ironic describes something that is the opposite of what was expected, not just a funny coincidence.