We’ve talked before about the mnemonic devices most people are taught in school to help them learn to spell, such as “I before E except after C,” which helps children recognize and memorize letter patterns. We’ve also talked about the … Continue reading…
When you’re first learning words as a child, it’s tempting to spell every word the way it sounds. After all, why should there be more than one way to spell a sound? As an adult, you might ask yourself the … Continue reading…
English is the language that seems to cause the most difficulties for people in terms of spelling and pronunciation. While it’s very time-consuming to learn to read and write Japanese because of the complexity of the characters, it’s a very … Continue reading…
Unlike several other world languages, the vowel sounds in English aren’t fixed. In Japanese, for example, the sound we’d represent by the letter a is always pronounced AH. In English, on the other hand, the letter a can be pronounced … Continue reading…
There’s long been a debate over difficulties with English spelling – since the 15th century, in fact, when printed documents were first widely produced in England. It has been so many centuries since English was first written down that today … Continue reading…
As we’ve said before, one of the hardest parts about learning how to correctly spell English vocabulary is dealing with the many different letter combinations that form the different sounds when a word is pronounced, and the dozens of different … Continue reading…
Back in June the 84th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee stumped its young competitors with words like huipil (a traditional Mayan tunic-style top) and puszta (the grassy plains in Hungary). If you want to give yourself a New Year’s challenge, … Continue reading…
One of the major sources of frustration for people learning English is the frequent disconnect between the way a word is spelled and the way it’s pronounced. All languages evolve over time, of course, but English has come a very … Continue reading…
If you’re getting tired of spelling practice, and think that surely times were easier back when the language was simpler, without all of the new technological and literary terms that have been invented over the past four centuries, consider this: … Continue reading…
What you say, and how you say it, has a big impact on how people see you and what sort of impression you make. The words you use and they way you use them can enhance your image as an … Continue reading…