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Italian - the lengthening language
Egidio Del Boca, director of Vercelli's Centre for Lexicography and expert in the Italian language, analysed an amazing 114 thousand different Italian words. Here are some of his findings
Most commonly used letters
Vowels and consonants alternated at the top of the table with "I" at number one spot with 131,293 usages. Popular consonants included "R", followed by "T" and then "N".
The longest word
Esofagodermatodigiunoplastica with its 29 letters is the longest word in the Italian language. Most commonly used Italian words weigh in between 7 and 12 letters.
A lengthening language
Del Boca discovered that the Italian language is growing longer through the ages. Indeed words have lengthened by some 20% since the 1800s. The phenomenon is due to an increase in compound words as well the tendency to adopt foreign terms in the Italian tongue.