Spelling
English spelling is a common cause of problems for both native speakers and second language learners. Can you guess which words cause the most difficulty? Write down what you think are the ten most often misspelled words.My wife likes to remind herself of things to buy by writing a note to herself on a message board in the kitchen. This morning I was startled to see the word 'Polish' at the top of the list. Polish what? I thought, sausage? It took a few seconds for me to realise that she was referring to a cleaning material rather than a nationality.
The confusion was caused by my internal sounding out of a long 'o' (as in 'Joe') rather than a short one (as in 'police'). Not particularly logical, I know, but it was early in the morning. And English is a language which does sometime lure you down these linguistic cul-de-sacs.
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