Real Kato Blog: Spelling

Thoughts on the wonderful English language.

So the Scripps National Spelling Bee was on TV last week. Usually I'm glued to the screen watching it, but it seemed a little anti-climactic this year... it ended so quickly. The winning word was "serrefine", which honestly didn't seem that difficult. Maybe slightly more difficult than "euonym", but not as difficult as some of the words that eliminated contestants in earlier rounds.

Anyway, spelling has been on my mind lately, partly because of the bee. There are some words that always look wrong to me. "Gauge" is one of them; it looks like that spelling would be pronounced "gawdj". "Guage" would make more sense to me, since there are other words starting with "gu" where the "u" is not pronounced: "guile", "guide", "guitar", "guard".

"Weird" and "seize" are a couple words that violate the i-before-e-except-after-c (and-when-sounded-as-A-as-in-neighbor-and-weigh) rule. Those bug me too.

"Happened" seems like it should be "happenned". The past tense of "pen" (when used as a verb) is "penned", so why just one "n" in "happened"?

What words do you think should be spelled differently?

Permalink 6 Comment

Posted by Ken in: commentary

Comments

Comment #1 from JohnC (Guest)
2007 Jun 4 - 11:23 pm : #

recommend. I always spell this word wrong, because of the two ms. I want two cs instead for some reason.

Comment #2 from Jen (Guest)
2007 Jun 5 - 8:29 am : #

warranty
vacuum
broccoli

Comment #3 from Noelle (Guest)
2007 Jun 5 - 9:19 am : #

What I don't understand really are the rules. If you freeze something it's "frozen" but if you squeeze something it isn't "squozen" it's just squeezed.

Comment #4 from DonnaF (Guest)
2007 Jun 5 - 7:45 pm : #

Thank you spell check! separate... I always spell it seperate and watch it immediately auto-fixed by whatever word processing software I'm using.

Noelle I think I'm going to say squozen from now on.

Comment #5 from Brett Lam (Guest)
2007 Jun 13 - 10:32 pm : #

I was on the phone today with a chinese gentleman who said his name was "Hurayng Gu." When I asked him to spell his first name he spelled it "Frank."

The word "Hurayng" will get me every time.

"Caesar" is another 'why spell it this way?' word.

Comment #6 from Ellen (Guest)
2007 Jun 18 - 11:40 pm : #

Ok...a long, long time ago us BNR girls would go out to dinner and such, and the name of our "party" quickly became KENNEDY because...no one could pronounce any of our last names, nor spell them....

So, a few weeks ago I ventured near Burney's hometown in NC, a place called White Lake. Me and my training friend (we were there to do a triathlon the next day) go to the only restaurant in town for dinner, and I put our name in as Kennedy....the hostess girl asked me how to spell it!

Ellen

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