...according to a presentation at the Spelling Society. (Does that sound like a fun crowd, or what?) Anyway, here's a list of 100 words identified as too hard:
"Orange, foreign, rhinoceros, properly, vomit, tambourine, tournament, tourist, heaven, engine, exquisite, opposite, advertisement, gnarled, rigid, risen, sinister, spinach, video, vinegar, tie, wheelie, quiet, science, crier, pliers, soldier, Monday, mongrel, monkey, courage, magic, manage, palace, four, journey, gnash, gnaw, gnome, ghastly, guard, miracle, miserable, pigeon, pity, prison, month, mother, nothing, once, smother, son, sponge, tongue, wonder, almost, both, comb, ghost, gross, most, only, post, programme, deny, reply, July, obey, caterpillar, chapel, damage, dragon, fabulous, family, famished, garage, glacier, habit, hazard, hexagonal, imagine, panic, radish, miaow, powder, cauliflower, plant, pyjamas, raft, rather, salami, task, vast, kiosk, kiwi, machine, encourage, somersault, swollen, souvenir"
There's no denying English is a crazy language, but forgive me for feeling the tone of this piece to be a bit panicky and over the top. This also reminds me of that wonderful alternative spelling of "fish": ghoti. Read all about it here.
2 comments:
ok...so those people do sound a little over the top. But I was really fascinated by the whole english spelling reformation! very interesting!
"plant" is a hard word to spell?! Seriously? I find that baffling. German went through a spelling reformation a decade or so ago, changing compound words with dropped letters so all of the letters were there. So a ballerina (Ballett + Tanzerin) became Balletttanzerin instead of Ballettanzerin. Because, you know, three t's in a row made more sense.
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