Every Thursday a question is waiting for you! You have a week to find the answer - in ENGLISH, of course - and send it to us, with your name, surnames and school year to:
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Question(22-28/10/2009):
WHICH IS THE LONGEST ENGLISH WORD IN A DICTIONARY?
Solution to Question 1:
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis (45 letters)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, ", it refers to a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, causing inflammation in the lungs.' In Spanish it is the same.
Question(29-5/10-11/2009):
UP TO WHICH NUMBER DO YOU HAVE TO COUNT TO FIND AN “A”?
Solution to Question 2:
One hundred and one
Question(5-12/11/2009):
WHICH COUNTRIES HAVE ELIZABETH II AS THE FORMAL HEAD OF STATE?
Solution to Question 3:
Apart from the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II is also Queen of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, where she is represented by Governors-General.
Question(12-19/11/2009):
WHY DO WE ALWAYS WRITE PRONOUN “I” IN CAPITAL LETTERS?
Solution to Question 4:
When the old English "Ich" (like in German) became reduced to "I" it was thought to be too small and insignificant to be a real word and could easily get attached to the end or beginning of another word. So scribes and later printers took the habit of capitalising it.
Question(19-26/11/2009):
WHY DO ENGLISH WRITE XXX (TO MEAN KISSES) TO END AN INFORMAL LETTER?
Solution to Question 5:
During the Middle Ages those who could not write their names signed legal documents with an 'X'. They used to kiss the "X" as a crucifix or bible to emphasize the importance of the mark. Finally this practice came to symbolize the kiss." The first mention in literature of XXX for kisses at the bottom of a letter was in 1901, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Question(26/11-3/12/2009):
WHO ARE THE TWO FAMOUS WRITERS WHO DIED IN 1616?
Solution to Question 6:
William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.
Question(3-10/12/2009):
WHAT IS THE MAIN OBJECTIVE OF THE QUEEN’S ENGLISH SOCIETY AND WHEN WAS IT FOUNDED?
Solution to Question 7:
The Queen's English Society was founded in 1972 by Joe Clifton, an Oxford graduate and schoolteacher. It is registered as a charity.
The objects of the Society "are to promote the maintenance, knowledge, understanding, development and appreciation of the English language colloquially and in literature; to educate the public in its correct and elegant usage; and to discourage the intrusion of anything detrimental to clarity or euphony”. There are no formal qualifications for membership beyond sympathy with the Society's aims and a willingness to pay the annual subscription. Contrary to popular belief, members are not required to be experts on good English and are certainly not required to drop their accent in favour of received pronunciation. In Spain we have “la Real Academia de la Lengua Española”.
Question(17/12/2009-07/01/2010):
WHAT DOES WC STAND FOR?
Solution to Question 8:
Water Closet. The modern toilet was invented by a man named Thomas Crapper, so the slang terms "crapper" and "john" are also used for “toilet”. Years ago, when indoor plumbing replaced the outhouse, a room needed to be created for the formerly nonexistent "crapper". Most often an existing closet was converted to a "bathroom", and thus become the "water closet".
Question(07/01/2010-14/01/2010):
WHAT IS THE LONGEST ONE SYLLABLE WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Solution to Question 9:
The longest one syllable word in he English language is "screeched".
Question(14/01/2010-28/01/2010):
OF ALL THE WORDS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, WHICH ONE HAS THE MOST DEFINITIONS?
Solution to Question 10:
The word “set” with 464 definitions.
Question(28/01/2010-05/02/2010):
WHAT ARE THE MOST COMMON LETTERS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE?
Solution to Question 11:
The most common letters in English are "R", "S", "T", "L", "N", "E".
Question(05/02/2010-12/02/2010):
OF ALL THE LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD, ENGLISH HAS THE LARGEST VOCABULARY. HOW MANY WORDS HAS IT GOT?
Solution to Question 12:
There is no single sensible answer to this question. It is impossible to count the number of words in a language, because it is so hard to decide what counts as a word.
It is also difficult to decide what counts as 'English'. What about medical and scientific terms? Latin words used in law, French words used in cooking, German words used in academic writing, Japanese words used in martial arts? Do you count Scots dialect? Youth slang? Computing jargon?
The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of interjections, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. These figures take no account of entries with senses for different parts of speech (such as noun and adjective).
This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.
Question(17/02/2010-24/02/2010):
WHO WAS WILLIAM CAXTON?
Solution to Question 13:
William Caxton (c. 1415~1422 – c. March 1492) was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. He was the first English person to work as a printer and the first person to introduce a printing press into England. He was also the first English retailer of books (his London contemporaries were all Dutch, German or French).
Question(04/03/2010-11/03/2010):
WHAT IS THE OLDEST SURVIVING EPIC POEM IN BRITISH LITERATURE?
Solution to Question 14:
Departaments