Fun language quirks

English is not normal: 10 incredible eccentricities of our language

Did you know English is one of the few languages where the first-person singular pronoun "I" is always capitalized? Or that it contains words that can mean two completely opposite things? Even something as simple as the days of the week reveals a difference: in many other languages, they are always written in lowercase. English is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to explain. In fact, some of its strangest features might surprise even native speakers. From unusual grammar rules to words with surprising pasts, English is filled with quirks that make it unlike any other language. Here are 10 fascinating things that make English unique.

If you’ve ever talked with someone learning English, you’ve probably heard the same question: How can words like "cough," "dough," and "through" all be spelled almost the same but sound completely different? It’s a fair question, and one that even native speakers sometimes struggle to answer.

English is unusual because the same group of letters can be pronounced in several completely different ways. Few spellings illustrate that better than the ending "-ough." Depending on the word, it can be pronounced nine different ways. Linguists even have a famous mnemonic to demonstrate the chaos: "A rough-coated (uff), dough-faced (oh), thoughtful (aw) ploughman (ow) strode through (oo) the streets of Scarborough (uh); after falling into a lough (ock), he coughed (off) and hiccoughed (up)." No wonder English spelling has a reputation for keeping learners on their toes.

Fortunately, there is an explanation for those discrepancies between pronunciation and spelling in English.

Unlike Spanish or Italian, where words are usually spelled the way they sound, English is full of surprises. Through, threw, and thorough all sound different despite looking similar, while words like knife, debt, and receipt contain silent letters. That’s because English borrowed vocabulary from many different languages, and when the printing press helped standardize spelling in the late 1400s, pronunciation was still changing. The Great Vowel Shift (which occurred primarily between the 15th and 17th centuries) transformed the way many words were spoken, but their spellings largely stayed the same. The result is a language where spelling often has to be memorized rather than guessed, making spelling bees a uniquely English challenge.

You may have noticed people using "they" to refer to a single person and assumed it was a modern invention. Surprisingly, it’s anything but new.

The singular "they" has been part of English for more than 600 years. It appears as early as the 14th century in William and the Werewolf, an anonymous Middle English poem from around 1350, and was later used naturally by some of the greatest writers in the language, including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare, and Jane Austen. In fact, Austen used the singular "they" dozens of times in Pride and Prejudice (1813), writing lines such as, "I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly." The controversy came much later. During the 18th and 19th centuries, grammarians who wanted English to follow the rules of Latin argued that writers should use the generic "he" instead. But everyday speakers never completely abandoned the singular "they," which is why it has survived for centuries and remains part of modern English today.

Many English words have more than one meaning. But two words stand in a league of their own, with so many definitions that they hold a record in the dictionary.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "set" has one of the longest entries, spanning more than 20 pages and containing over 430 distinct senses. Depending on the context, it can be a verb (to set a book on a table), a noun (a chess set or a television set), or an adjective (the plans are set). And as if that weren’t enough, another everyday word is giving it competition. Recent linguistic research suggests that "run" may now have more than 640 distinct meanings and uses, making it one of the most versatile words in the English language. No wonder even native speakers sometimes have to rely on context to figure out exactly what someone means.

Have you ever noticed that some English words seem to contradict themselves? A single word can sometimes mean two opposite things, depending on the context.

Take "dust," which can mean either to remove dust or to sprinkle something with dust. "Cleave" can mean to hold together or to split apart. "Overlook" can mean to watch over something or to fail to notice it. And "sanction" can mean both to approve an action and to impose a penalty for it. These unusual words are called contronyms, terms that have two opposing meanings that somehow coexist in the same word. While other languages have them too, such as the French hôte ("host" or "guest") and the German aufheben ("to preserve" or "to abolish"), English is especially rich in these linguistic contradictions.

What if we told you that English has no future? It sounds a bit dramatic, but from a grammar viewpoint, it’s actually true.

Unlike languages such as Spanish or French, English has no separate future verb tense. Instead of changing the verb itself, English builds the future with helper words like "will," "shall," or "going to." In other words, English verbs only change with the present and past tenses. We say "walk," "walking," and "walked," but for the future we simply add a helper: "will walk." Many other languages work differently. In Spanish, for example, the verb itself changes in all three time frames: camino (I walk), caminé (I walked), and caminaré (I will walk).

Every time you write about yourself, you follow one of English’s most unusual rules: the first-person singular pronoun "I" is always capitalized.

It feels completely natural to us, but it is surprisingly rare among the world’s major languages. Spanish uses yo, French uses je, Italian says io, Portuguese uses eu, and Dutch says ik, all written in lowercase (unless, of course, they start a sentence). English stands out as the only major language that always gives its first-person pronoun a capital letter, and the reason is more practical than symbolic. In medieval handwritten texts, the single letter "i" was easy to miss among surrounding words. To make it easier to read, scribes gradually began writing it larger, and by the late 15th century, the capital "I" had become the standard form we still use today.

"Sit down," "give up," "look into," "take off," "make up," and "run out of" are expressions English speakers use every day naturally. But for people learning the language, it can feel like a never-ending challenge.

That’s because phrasal verbs rarely follow a predictable pattern. The same verb can take on dozens of completely different meanings just by adding a small word like up, out, on, or off. Other languages have similar constructions. German, for example, has separable verbs such as ankommen ("to arrive"), which literally combines an ("at") and kommen ("to come"). In a sentence, the particle separates and moves to the end: Ich komme morgen an ("I arrive tomorrow"). But while many languages use verb-particle combinations, English stands out for having hundreds of phrasal verbs, making them one of the defining features of everyday conversation and one of the biggest troubles for learners.

If you’ve ever written in another language, you’ve probably noticed something that feels almost wrong at first: the words for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday lose their capital letters.

In most of the world’s major languages, the days of the week are written like ordinary nouns, with lowercase letters unless they begin a sentence. But English is one of the very few exceptions. We capitalize all seven days every time we write them, and this is surprisingly rare worldwide. In standard German, the days are capitalized too, but only because all nouns are. In English, however, the days are classified as proper nouns (like Tom or New York) rather than common nouns (like house or pencil). That grammatical distinction is why they always begin with a capital letter.

Believe it or not, some of the most common words in English are complete mysteries. We use them every day, but no one knows where they came from.

Most English words can be traced back through older languages, but a handful have no clear ancestry at all. Historical linguists consider them native English words with unknown origins because they have no identifiable roots and no obvious relatives. One example is the word "dog": for centuries, the common Germanic word for a canine was "hound." Then, sometime in the late Old English period, "dog" suddenly appeared and eventually replaced it. "Boy" first showed up in the 13th century as boie, originally meaning a servant, rogue, or rascal, but its origin remains a mystery. The same is true for "bad," which appeared in Middle English in the late 1200s and gradually displaced older words such as "evil," despite having no known linguistic roots.

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Go The Distance: Unravel These Ten Laughably Long English Words!

Image: Diana Polekhina

English can sometimes be a daunting language. Think about the challenges a non-native speaker must face in order to learn that "buy", "by", and "bye" are spelled differently but sound the same, or that the word "bear" can both mean "a large mammal" and "to support the weight of something". However, we believe that this difficulty is a large part of what makes the English language so beautiful, filled with unique words and spellings that completely amaze us.

We have compiled a list of ten long words that would both terrify a Spelling Bee contestant and make the mouth of a Scrabble player water. These words range from "a few letters too long" to "ridiculously lengthy". Enjoy!

Image: Rusty Watson

We’ll begin this list with one of the longest American demonyms we could find. While the official designations for the good people living in "The Constitution State" are "Connecticuter" and "Connecticutian", the unofficial demonym "Connecticutensian" can also be used.

Interestingly, none of these above-mentioned denominations is as regularly used as the colloquial nickname "nutmeggers". This comes with the unofficial nickname of Connecticut, known as "The Nutmeg State".

Image: Caroline Veronez

Looking for new ways to tell your partner they are beautiful, but the words "pretty" or "handsome" seem to be overused? Don’t worry, we got you covered. Next time you are enjoying a candle-lit dinner, try looking into their eyes and saying, "Darling, you look absolutely pulchritudinous tonight."

Well, maybe this is not the most romantic of words, but it is still pretty interesting. It is derived from the word pulchritude, an out-of-style noun that means "beauty". In turn, this word comes from the Latin word pulcher, which translates to "beautiful".

Image: Gary Chan

Try saying this three times fast. As quirky as this word sounds, its meaning is not as fun. "Floccinaucinihilipilification" is a word that describes the act of considering something completely worthless or unimportant.

However, don’t be too discouraged by this word’s meaning: chances are it was never used in casual conversation. In fact, it is mostly quoted as an example of a ridiculously long word, and not as an actual measure of importance.

Image: Pawel Czerwinski

While the verb "tergiversate" isn’t exactly synonymous with lying, they are both cut from the same cloth. Its noun form, "tergiversation", describes the act of producing different statements, often twisting and turning facts to protect self-interest.

However, tergiversate has an accidental ring to it that lying usually doesn’t, since someone caught in tergiversation is found after stating contradictory facts that evidence his or her deceitful ways.

Image: Akira Hojo

Just like "floccinaucinihilipilification", the word "antidisestablishmentarianism" is considered one of the longest non-scientific words in the English language. However, the main difference between them is that antidisestablishmentarianism was for a while present in everyday vocabulary, albeit in 19th-century England.

This word describes a movement that advocated for the Church of England to continue to receive government patronage. In fact, it was created as a response to another movement also blessed with an extremely lengthy name called "disestablishmentarianism", which called for the separation between church and state.

Image: Umberto

While this word is definitively a mouthful, it is also rather straightforward. "Uncopyrightable" describes cultural products such as books, films, or photographs that can’t be claimed or protected under copyright laws.

The characteristics that might make something uncopyrightable are various: If the author is unknown, for instance, or if a certain item belongs to the public, like a legal code or constitution. Sometimes the matter of who is the author of a certain cultural item is disputed, and therefore no individual can truly claim ownership, so the work is deemed uncopyrightable.

Image: Sander Sammy

It is rather ironic that we try to explain the meaning of such a bewildering word as "incomprehensibleness" when it literally defines a state in which something is particularly or downright impossible to understand.

While its synonym "incomprehensibility" is far more regularly used, we must take our hats to "incomprehensibleness", a noun that took a word with an already difficult spelling and added a few extra letters just for the sake of being extra confusing.

Image: Liv Bruce

Just like with "Pulchritudinous", we believe there are warmer ways to refer to your family, but let’s explore this word on the off chance you want to show your affection at the next Thanksgiving in a more formal, slightly offputting way.

"Consanguineous" is an adjective for people related by blood and, while it is mostly used in matters related to ancestry, it is perfectly suitable to describe your immediate family. The main root of this word comes from the Latin word sanguin, which means "blood".

Image: Andreas Praefcke

We know what you are thinking: This one feels a little bit like cheating. After all, this word was first said by the legendary Julie Andrews in the timeless Disney film "Mary Poppins", and it was written as an extremely long adjective, meant to sound silly for comedic effect.

However, you might be surprised to learn that this word has been included in several renowned dictionaries: Cambridge Dictionary defines "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" as "extremely good". And while its use will forever be associated with our favorite British nanny, this wacky word has truly transcended its medium.

Image: Brett Jordan

We’ll end this article with a bit of an ironic twist. Besides being the longest word we could find, "hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia" describes an irrational fear, as all words ending in "phobia" do. However, this noun holds the dubious distinction of describing an unreasonable fear to itself, since someone suffering from this phobia is terrified of long words.

To make matters worse, some people spell this word with an extra P ("hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia"), which some believe is a humorous misspelling in order to make the word even longer.