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STORY: Why is English so hard to spell?There are clear differences between how words are written and how they are said.If English is your first language you may not realize it’s not that normal ...
This only further complicates the spelling, however. On the one hand, words that retained anglicised spellings may be misread in a hyperforeign way. On the other hand, words that are respelled in a 'foreign' way may be misread as if they are English words, e.g. Muslim was formerly spelled Mooslim because of its original pronunciation.
The irregular spelling of very common words, such as are, have, done, of, would makes it difficult to fix them without introducing a noticeable change to the appearance of English text. English is the only one of the top ten major languages with no associated worldwide regulatory body with the power to promulgate spelling changes.
English has generally preserved the original spelling when borrowing words; and even more importantly, English began to be widely written and printed during the Middle English period: the later development of modern English included a Great Vowel Shift and many other changes in phonology, yet the older spellings, which are no longer phonetic ...
If you've ever second-guessed yourself while trying to spell words like "beautiful," "receive," and "license," you're far from the only one. The post 21 Commonly Misspelled Words and How to Spell ...
A Grammar of the English Language, In a Series of Letters: Intended for the Use of Schools and of Young Persons in General, but more especially for the use of Soldiers, Sailors, Apprentices, and Plough-Boys. New York and Chicago: A. S. Barnes and Company. Cobbett, William (2003) [1818]. A Grammar of the English Language (Oxford Language ...
Today's British English spellings mostly follow Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), while many American English spellings follow Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language ("ADEL", "Webster's Dictionary", 1828). [2] Webster was a proponent of English spelling reform for reasons both philological and nationalistic.
Inventive spelling (sometimes invented spelling) is the use of unconventional spellings of words.. Conventional written English is not phonetic (that is, it is not written as it sounds, due to the history of its spelling, which led to outdated, unintuitive, misleading or arbitrary spelling conventions and spellings of individual words) unlike, for example, German or Spanish, where letters have ...