Languages Magazine

20 Language Trivia for Learners to Learn English Language

By Tlb
Learn English qwerty keyboard

Image via Wikipedia - Drawn by Mysid

Have you heard of the “-gry riddle”? If you are someone who learn English language for quite a longer time already, you probably have heard of this riddle before. According to the riddle, there are only three words in the dictionary that ends with “gry”: hungry, angry, and what is the last one? For a long time, I personally haven’t known the answer to this riddle.

…Until I searched this riddle in the Internet myself.

The answer responded this riddle was “meagry or aggry”, which was assumed to be the answer to this original version of the riddle. But the truth is, there are lots of queries concerning the puzzle if the puzzle in itself is honestly asked correctly. Well, the best part of puzzles, riddles, and trivia when learners learn English at language school is that it actually compels them to dig more of what the language is. It’s a good motivation to learn the language, isn’t it?

And speaking of trivia, we have 20 enlisted below. You might have not known all these well, and some may be too familiar to you already; but the best part of this is that it fascinates people that English is indeed one versatile language we really must appreciate.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis

The longest common English word in the dictionary

Screeched and strengths

The two longest one-syllable words in English

Facetious, abstemious, annelidous, and annelidous

The words which contain all five (or six, if you append “ly”) vowels in alphabetical order

Duoliteral, subcontinental, and uncomplimentary

The words which contain all five vowels in reverse alphabetical order

Bergschrund, borschts, eschscholtzia, latchstring, and weltschmerz

Four words which contain the longest strings of consonants

Uncopyrightable

The longest word with no repeated letters

Orange, silver, month, and purple

Four English words which no word in the English language rhymes with

Tremendous, horrendous, stupendous, and hazardous

The only four-letter words in the English language which end in “dous”

“Go!”

The shortest complete sentence in the English language

Facetious, abstemious, and arsenious

The three words that contain all the vowels in the correct order

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

The only sentence that uses every letter in the English language

Lethologica

The word that describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.

Racecar and kayak
these are the two words are the same whether they are read left to right or right to left

Checkmate

This famous word applied in chess comes from the Persian phrase “Shah mat” which means “the king is dead”.

Orthotetrachidecahedrons

Word describing the shape of the bubbles in beer foam

Alfalfa and Hadassah

Longest words typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the middle row (“asdfghjkl”)

Rupturewort and proterotype

Longest words typeable on a qwerty keyboard on the top row (”qwertyuiop”)

Dismantlement

Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with alternating hands

Homophony, homophyly, nonillion, nonillion, polyonomy, and polyphony

Longest words typeable on a qwerty keyboard with right hand

Desegregated, desegregates, reverberated, reverberates, stewardesses, and watercress

Longest word typeable on a qwerty keyboard with left hand

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