As has been discussed on this blog before, I love the English language. It’s weird, unnecessarily complex, and is an ever evolving entity. In short, it’s a mess, and I am a big fan.
I don’t want to get too pedantic here, or discuss college English major type stuff, but as an example of the absolute off the charts weirdness of the language let’s talk about a single word: lit. “Lit” is a verb, and most often used as the past tense of the word “light”. For example, “the room was lit by candlelight.” or, “Jennifer lit her cigarette.” However, it can also be used to mean something is exciting, impressive, or very good, like someone saying that the “party was lit”. Incidentally, the word can also be used in future tense, as in the party “is gonna be lit”, which is a presumptuous statement, but still an interesting evolution. Other uses for the word include as an abbreviation for the word “literature”, and as slang for a drunkard, i.e. “Josh is all lit up again.”
Just the other day, I accidentally referred to something as being “litted” which isn’t a word and was a slip of the tongue, but I kind of like the word and may start using anyway. “Litted” is a word that is the past tense of a word that is in the past tense. You just have to use it correctly. I would not say, for example, “The party’s going to be lit!” Instead I would say something more along the lines of “This party is going to have been litted!” I believe that is a future-past past participle, but maybe we shouldn’t get too hung up on it.
Anyway, English is super weird. Here are some more weird facts about the English language for you to enjoy.
-The alphabet was not written in alphabetical order. In fact the last letter added was “J.”
-There are no states featuring the letter “Q.”
-The shortest word in the English language is “I.”
-William Shakespeare added 1,700 words to the English language in his lifetime. So far I only have “litted.”
-There are more people in the world who have learned English as a second language than there are native English speakers. In fact, more people in China speak English than in the U.S.
-The shortest grammatically correct (non fragment) sentence in the English language is “Go.” It has the implied subject of “you”, and is what is known as an “imperative sentence.” There are those that would argue that “Go” is cheating since the subject is implied, and would claim the shortest sentence as “I am.” I would claim that these people are no fun.
-The word meaning “the day after tomorrow” is “overmorrow” which is a lovely word that no one ever uses.
-English is not the official language of the United States. We don’t have one. So there’s still hope for all those Trekkies who learned Klingon, I suppose.
-The little dot above the lowercase “i” and “j” is called a “tittle.” Which means that the word “title” includes a “tittle” and that makes me happy for some reason.
-The word “goodbye” comes from an Old English phrase meaning “God be with you”.
I think that’s a good place to stop. See you next time for another enlightening (enlittening?) edition of MonDAVEs.
Hey, wait, I made up the word MonDAVEs too. HA! That’s two words! Take that Shakespeare! I’m coming for your record…
MonDAVEs with Dave Brink 