Page 8 - Language Facts

The Ampersand (&) used to be the 27th letter of the English Alphabet!

Today’s English alphabet has 26 letters and concludes with the letter Z, but it wasn’t always like that. The ampersand, the symbol “&” which means “and”, used to be the 27th letter of the English language. The ampersand has an interesting history behind both the symbol and the name. So where did it come from and where did it go? The symbol “&” came into being over 1500 years ago.

Roman scribes used to write in cursive and tried to save as much space as possible. The Latin word for 'and' is et, which when written in cursive became “&” after linking the e and t.

The name “ampersand” also has an interesting history. & was considered a letter in itself and was said by children at the end of the alphabet in the 1800’s. They would conclude the alphabet by saying “X, Y, Z and per se and.” Per se means “by itself,” so children were really saying, “X, Y, Z, and by itself and.”

As the years passed, the end of the alphabet began to slur together and the words “and per se and” simply turned into “ampersand,” which is now the name for the symbol &!

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GIF is Oxford's word of the year.

Ironically, GIF is not a word, but an acronym. It means Graphic Interchange Format, and although it's 25 years old, it wasn't until this year that Oxford decided to recognize it's cultural significance. As you probably know, the format is the most popular way to share animations online, mostly because of its compatibility with pretty much every web browser out there.

The format is exploding in popularity right now thanks to websites like Tumblr. We've also launched not one, but three sites based around GIFs this year because we recognized the popularity of the format. If you're curious Oxford also said that it was appropriate to pronounce GIF with either a soft or hard G, although the creators pronounce it Jiff like the peanut butter brand.

Other finalists included Super Pac, Super Storm and YOLO. So there you go, if you enjoy GIFs, you should check out our GIF-based sites, GIFstache, That's So True and Cinemagrapher.

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A Chinese poet wrote a poem that can be read in 2,848 DIFFERENT ways!

Su Hui, a Chinese poet, wrote a poem called the "Suanji Tu," which takes the form of a twenty-nine by twenty-nine character grid.  The poem can be read diagonally, vertically, horizontally, backwards, or forwards allowing for 2,848 different readings!

Su Hui invented the genre of the palindrome poem, and her Suanji Tu is the most complex example written to date. 

Unfortunately, all of Su Hui's literary work has mysteriously disappeared, and all that remains are replications of her unusual creations.

Click here to learn more about Chinese poetry!

A retired professor translated the New Testament into Pidgin under the title 'Da Jesus Book.'

Joseph Grimes, a retired linguistics professor at Cornell University worked for 12 years with 26 pidgin speakers in translating the New Testament into Hawaiian Pidgin.

When it was finally published in 2000, it created some controversy. Critics tried to ban the book as an example of slang and a degraded form of English. Check out the most famous Bible verse: John 3:16:

'God wen get so plenny love an aloha fo da peopo inside da world, dat he wen send me, his one an ony Boy, so dat everybody dat trus me no get cut off from God, but get da real kine life dat stay to da max fovea.'

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In 1971, a 17 year old German girl was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Amazon surviving 10 days on her own!

Juliane Koepcke was the daughter of two famous Zoologists who ran a research station in the Amazonian Jungles of Peru. She was on a flight with her mother going from Lima, Peru to Pucallpa, Peru in the Amazon jungle. The flight would take less than an hour. They were flying to spend Christmas with Juliane’s father. The flight went fine until halfway through it. A lightning bolt hit a fuel tank and ripped the right wing off.

Presents were flying around the cabin and then Juliane was sucked out of the airplane as it spiraled to the ground. She was still attached to a row of chairs. She fell two miles before she landed in the jungle among thick foliage. She knew about the Amazon and how to survive, because her father had taught her. She had a broken collarbone and one eye was swollen shut.

She had major lacerations on her arms and legs. She found a creek and began walking through it to find a stream that would lead her to a river and civilization. She survived crocodiles, piranhas, and devils rays. She walked for 10 days before she found a boat and a hut. She was starving and had maggots infesting her wounds. She stayed in the hut for the night and the next day Peruvian lumberjacks found her and brought her to a nearby town.

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