Spelling Mistakes

English spelling causes 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 misspelt words.

Now check your answers here. How many of you words were on the list

What makes some English words difficult to spell? One clear source of difficulty is caused by inconsistent pronunciation: many sound out definately when the spelling points to definitely(2). And comparatively few outside the Royal Shakespeare Company clearly enunciate separate (1) - more typically the 'a' becomes an 'e'. This problem is most glaring when (many) young people transcribe 'could have' as 'could of' or a lot as 'alot' (14)

In some cases its an unexpected combination of letters containing few phonetic clues - bureaucracy (11) and manoeuvre (3) are examples here. In both these cases the spelling pattern is literally foreign: French to be precise. Until comparatively recently a basic knowledge of French was assumed of every 'educated' English speaker but this is no longer the case. The same is applies to those other providers of hidden spelling rules: Latin and Greek.

An understandable uncertainty as to when 'c' rather than 's' applies lies behind consensus (6) supersede (12) conscience (19) and - at least partially - unnecessary (7) . Similarly, the what creates the 'ck' sound in liquify (18).

By far the most difficult hurdle for any speller, however, is the dreaded double letter dilemma. Two 'n's or one? Does two 'c's look right? Spellcheck will help, of course, which is why many young people delegate the job entirely to that marvellous (2 'l's) programme (1 'm' and drop the 'e' in the US or amongst techies).

Sadly technology has not yet produced a spell-checking pen for that hand-written application form.
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