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. In ...

Take a look at the following English words: butcher, squirrel, mortgage, and choir. Does something seem off about them? At one point in time, the words move and love rhymed. So did blood, good, and ...

Misty Adoniou is a Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra. She is the author of the Cambridge University Press book 'Spelling ...

Many people were spellbound as they watched the newest Scripps National Spelling Bee champions — Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar — correctly sound out scherenschnitte and nunatak in order ...

My 11-year-old student sighs. How can the same letters make so many different sounds? We are looking at the letter combination “ough”, which can be read in seven different ways: “through”, “thorough”, ...

English, whatever its merits as a language, is a bitch to spell. There are so many rules, and so many exceptions, and yet in the end you have to learn a lot of words on a case-by-case basis. If future ...

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How can it be that “laughter” and “daughter” not only don’t rhyme but don’t sound remotely alike? What about “tomb,” “bomb,” and “comb”? Meanwhile, “liar” and “choir,” which couldn’t look more ...

For many Americans, spelling bees are a part of growing up in the United States. The challenge is obvious. From the moment kids begin to learn to read, there are clear differences between how words ...