The sound of the word, you wouldn't know that they were there. TheyĬan be found at the beginning, end or middle of the words and, from Over half the alphabet can appear as silent letters in words. What is a silent letter?Ī silent letter is a letter that must be included when you write the word even though you don't pronounce it. Yes, we stick letters in a word and then we don't pronounce them (sorry). There are lots of silent letters in English. Seize, weird, conscientious, conscience, efficient. With an 'a' sound - deign, eight, neighbour, feign, reign, vein, weight Of the word is like a long ee as in shield. One of the first English spelling rules that was learnt in most schools is As I mentioned earlier for every rule there is at least one exception. Learn the rules, but don't rely on them.Learn words with their possible prefixes and suffixes.Spell-checkers don't check for meaning, the most common misspelt words I have seen on the net are there and their. Use a dictionary, not a spell-checker! OK use a spell-checker, but don't rely on it.Underline the part of the word that you find most difficult. Keep a notebook of words you find difficult to spell.There are always some exceptions (sorry)!Įnglish has over 1,100 different ways to spell its 44 separate sounds, more than any other language, think of it as a game rather than a chore. The good news is that although many English words have irregular spellings As you learn English you will notice the pronunciation of a word often bears no resemblance to the way it is spelt, (sorry) usually you will find a historical reason for this. Was standardised and set in stone in numerous dictionaries, but the chaos peeks through from time to time. So one word could often be spelt in many different ways, seemingly you only need to look at original Shakespeare manuscripts to see this chaos in action.

In Olde Worlde England words were written as they sounded (phonetically) and To write English well, you need vocabulary, grammar, an understanding of punctuation and good spelling.Īs you learn English you might start to ask yourself, 'Why is English spelling such a nightmare in the first place?' One reason is that English has adopted words from many other languages, sometimes we keep the spelling and sometimes we change it to suit us. In fact, I often apologise for the horrors of English spelling, along with my rather frequent apologies for English pronunciation, this means I do a lot of apologising, but it's a fact: To speak English well, you need vocabulary, a nice accent, and good grammar. You know what I'm going to say, don't you? Spelling matters.Ĭartoon from ' Michael Leunig © - Published with permission. Double click on any word for its definition.

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