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Fun Facts About English #40 – The Letter ‘s’

01/17/2020 by admin

Kinney Brothers Publishing Fun Facts About English 40

There are more English words beginning with the letter s than with any other letter mainly because of clusters such as sc, sh, sp, and st. Followed by some distance are words that begin with p, c, d, m, and a.

According to Wolfram Language, a computational knowledge engine, in a list of 40,127 common words, s has 4,635 entries – as compared to x which only has 11. This simple Wolfram word cloud expresses the most frequent initial letters in the English language:

Wolfram Language word cloud

Bear in mind that the frequency of initial letters has no relationship to how often letters occur in English in general. E is the most common letter, followed by t and then a.

If you enjoy learning fun facts about the English language, you may be interested in reading about The Power of X, why Americans say /zee/ when the rest of the world says /zed/, or how the ampersand (&) was once part of the English alphabet!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom Fun Facts About English 40

Add punch to your classroom decor! Visit Donald’s English Classroom for wall maps and wall art, charts, pennants, and so much more!

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Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: alphabet, Donald's English Classroom, english language, English words, fun facts, initial letters, kinney brothers publishing, language patterns, language trivia, letter frequency, linguistic analysis, linguistic phenomena, Wolfram Language, word cloud, word statistics

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