As a Vietnamese native speaker, I have a few difficult Vietnamese words to spell correctly and quickly! Does this happen to you, native English speakers? I mean that do you have any English words difficult to spell (or pronounce) correctly and quickly? And could you please tell me what they are?
I wanna really know them and try to spell them and wonder why they are so hard to spell?
Thank you so much!
***** NOT A TEACHER ******
CrazYgeek,
(1) You are
100% correct: even native speakers (writers?) have
to use the dictionary for "hard" words.
(2) That is why we are told to read, read, and read. After a while,
your eyes become accustomed to the correct spelling, and when you
read or write a word incorrectly, a little voice tells you: Hey! that's
not correct!!!
(a) For example, some people spell the word "wierd." But I know it is
"weird" -- because I am an old man and have seen it spelled correctly
many times in my life.
(3) Sometimes, you have to make up your own memory aids. For example,
I will always spell "embarrass" correctly because I simply remind myself
it has 2 r's and 2 s's.
(4) And I will always spell "believe" correctly because of the word
"lie" in the middle of the word. ("I do not believe you because I know that
you lie.")
(5) Some children are taught this jingle:
When the sound is long e,
Write i
before e,
Except after c.
Therefore: thief/ brief/ achieve
but
deceit/ receive/ receipt
Sadly, however, there are exceptions to the rule, too. Such as:
either/ seize/leisure/weird/neither.
(I credit
Guide to Modern English 10 for this jingle information.)
(6) Please remember that English spelling is
so difficult
that people
are
not expected to know how to spell all of the more than 500,000 words
in English. In fact, we are told that it is normal to recognize certain
words (that is, know what they mean when we read them) but it is not
expected that we will use them in speech or be able to spell them without
a dictionary. I do not know about other languages, but it is impossible to
write in English without a dictionary. (Unless you do not care about
bad spelling.)
(5) So do not feel bad about having spelling problems. We native
speakers do, too. Welcome to the club!!!