Words that you tend to misspel mispell misspell

[nismaratwork]

Actual written content, from my great uncle to my grandfather, while the former was on his honeymoon (ca. 1950)...

"Having a wonderful time playing glof."

Maybe 'glof' is a fun alternative to Golf, and you've been missing out this entire time?

@BogG: I love English, but it's absolutely insane. I'm not sure what we expect from a Franco-Deutsch-Dutch-Latinate-Etc... language. Hungarian is easier...

 

[Dembadon]

Here are the ones that cause me to pause:

Correct Spelling (My spelling)

- Separate (Seperate)
- Unnecessary (Unecessary)
- Pharaoh (Pharoah) - Just wrote a paper on ancient Egypt and this word was quite the nuisance.
- Because (Becuase) - Not because I don't know how to spell it, but because my fingers are rebellious.

My mistakes are usually grammatical; I'll leave something and come back later to see that I'm missing an indefinite article somewhere, or my verb tense is screwed-up. This usually happens when I'm correcting something and don't re-read the sentence, or when I simply type something incorrectly, even though what I heard in my head was correct.

My wife and I will always exchange papers / lab reports for this very reason. When I proofread my own stuff, I'll sometimes read mistakes and not notice them because I'll see/hear what I meant to write, not what was actually written.

 

[Gokul43201]

Rithym...Rythme...Rythem?

But no: it's Rhythm, unfortunately. God, it gives me a headache.

And then when you ask someone, they're like: "You mean rhyme?""Y" has no business being a vowel, only part of the time either. That's total bull crap.

Rhythms is the longest English word in current usage that has no vowel. Maybe that knowledge will help with the spelling?

It's ...

i before e,
Except after c,
Or when sounded as "a,"
As in neighbour and weigh.
Or other weird words
Such as species, science, and seize.

But I always liked the idea that "weird" broke the rule. How fitting.

'Weird' is one of those words that I have to think of for half a second, before I can spell it right. I just remember that it is completely back-***-wards: not only does it break the "i before e" rule, it breaks it for no good reason ('science' and 'being' have good reasons).

I think the word I mistype the most is 'an' - I seem to almost always end up with 'and'.

 

[nismaratwork]

Rhythms is the longest English word in current usage that has no vowel. Maybe that knowledge will help with the spelling?

'Weird' is one of those words that I have to think of for half a second, before I can spell it right. I just remember that it is completely back-***-wards: not only does it break the "i before e" rule, it breaks it for no good reason ('science' and 'being' have good reasons).

I think the word I mistype the most is 'an' - I seem to almost always end up with 'and'.

Think of Weird in terms of its origins: Wyrd. Wi-e-rd would sound like "we air ed", and you're aiming for the proto-saxon: "Wyrda" like "vir-dah"... You want e-i "eh-ee" not "ee-eh".

 

[jobyts]

congradulation...congratulation...congragulation

ok, the PF spell checker says the second one is correct...

 

[physics girl phd]

I was going to post to this thread yesterday, but thought at the time I'd wait til tommorrow. (Finally managed to train myself to "tomorrow" a few years ago...)

 

[FrancisZ]

Sidebar: When very young, did anyone else here think LMNO was a single letter - elemmenno?

as in ...H, I, J, K, ELLEMMENNO, P...

Not that, per se. But other things like that: yes, definitely.I used to think the opening lyrics of All in the Family..."Gee didn't our old LaSalle run great..." was actually "Gee doesn't that all sound real great..." For years, I also actually believed that my grandmother's favorite soap opera: "The Young and the Restless;" was "The Young...and the Rest of Us."Indeed, those were the days.

 

[pergradus]

i can NEVER spell neccissary <---- see?

 

[qspeechc]

The "y" in "rhythm" is a vowel. Every word has a vowel.

Some difficulties in spelling would go if you remember the prefixes and suffixes. Tomorrow = to morrow
Misspell is American and should be mis-spell! The same with unnecessary = un-necessary!
When in doubt use "ise", but some words only take "ize", like "prize".
Words like "ridiculous" would not be mis-spelt if they were pronounced properly. The first "i" is short, like the second.

After all that pontificating, I must admit my spelling is just as faulty as everyone else's :p

 

[Borek]

I have problem with words with double consonants - but I see that's a common problem. And often my typing is too fast for th ecorrect "the". Not that I know where/when to use "the" and "a", so it is th emoot.

And sometimes, although rarely, I use "a" instead of "e" - like in "anough".

But then, contrary to most of you, for me English is almost only a written language; I have no idea how to correctly pronounce most of th ewords, so my writing is not clouded by phonetics.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Every word has a vowel.

Actually that's a quotation. Here's the source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenhard_Ng"
There's a word of 5 letters that's always spelled wrong.

 

[nismaratwork]

i can NEVER spell neccissary <---- see?

Just remember the Latin, which hasn't changed:
necessarius/necesse

Necess-ary

 

[nismaratwork]

I have problem with words with double consonants - but I see that's a common problem. And often my typing is too fast for th ecorrect "the". Not that I know where/when to use "the" and "a", so it is th emoot.

And sometimes, although rarely, I use "a" instead of "e" - like in "anough".

But then, contrary to most of you, for me English is almost only a written language; I have no idea how to correctly pronounce most of th ewords, so my writing is not clouded by phonetics.

Having figures out how Polish is roughly proncounced during a rather complex journey to understand Hungarian... I can see how english would be... alien. I personally find the rules of Polish to be... comprehensible, but I'm not sure how well the reverse would work. I think the nature of s, c, and z in English would be a headache.

 

[Gokul43201]

The "y" in "rhythm" is a vowel. Every word has a vowel.

Well, sorta. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_without_vowels

 

[FlexGunship]

"Vacuum" and "Continuum"

In my head, when I type or write "vacuum" I pronounce it (internally) as "vack-you-um" to help me remember.

In the same way that when I type "Wednesday" I pronounce it (internally) as "Wed-ness-day."

 

[jobyts]

****

The above word is not misspelt by me. Somehow, the PF software converts it to 4 stars

 

[cobalt124]

I struggle knowing when to use learned or learnt.

 

[qspeechc]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_without_vowels

In [...] Received Pronunciation, every lexical word must contain at least one spoken vowel in its pronunciation. In some [...] dialects, such as General American, a word may contain no other vowel sounds if it instead has a syllabic R sound, as in word.

Well that says it all. "General American" is not English.

*Awaits barrage of abuse*

 

[nismaratwork]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_without_vowels



Well that says it all. "General American" is not English.

*Awaits barrage of abuse*

What? I'm American and I'd agree that "GA" is a dialect of English... of course, every dialect is just that...

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

And often my typing is too fast for th ecorrect "the". Not that I know where/when to use "the" and "a", so it is th emoot.

Cool! That's like th email!

Just remember the Latin, which hasn't changed:
necessarius/necesse

Necess-ary

Necessarius sounds like the name of a large Neptune-like exojovian with 8 major moons and three other planets in the system, two inner small terrestrials and one outer superterrestrial with a moon the size of Ceres.


...


I just wowed myself with that.

 

[nismaratwork]

Cool! That's like th email!

Necessarius sounds like the name of a large Neptune-like exojovian with 8 major moons and three other planets in the system, two inner small terrestrials and one outer superterrestrial with a moon the size of Ceres.


...


I just wowed myself with that.

I have one response, "Duuuuuuuuuude... whooooaaaa."

 

[Evo]

I struggle knowing when to use learned or learnt.

Learned is American, learned is British.

 

[nismaratwork]

Learned is American, learned is British.

What about "Lorna-Doont"?

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

What about "Lorna-Doont"?

Wahtt?

 

[Evo]

What about "Lorna-Doont"?

I loved that movie, the one on A&E. Back when A&E was about quality classics, not a tv tabloid.

 

[nismaratwork]

I loved that movie, the one on A&E. Back when A&E was about quality classics, not a tv tabloid.

I was thinking of the shortbread cookies...

 

[Evo]

I was thinking of the shortbread cookies...

Those are great too.

 

[nismaratwork]

Those are great too.

Heh... I don't think I've ever had one, but the name stuck in my head for some reason. Possibly where my Spanish language course was supposed to be... it would explain a lot.

 

[FtlIsAwesome]

nu repplee
wuds taht yu tned two myzzpal... myzpull... miyzzdell...

 

[cobalt124]

Learned is American, learned is British.

I didn't know that, I thought they were used for different reasons depending on the sentence. I'm with the U.S. version here though, learned just looks wrong to me.