Welcome to the ASA Blog! In our first entry, we went over some common misspellings of English words (achieve, beginning, argument, appearance, lose) and we gave you a few hints about how to remember the correct way to spell them. In today’s lesson we’ll go over five more commonly misspelled words, as well as a brief overview of an especially difficult English letter pattern.

Today’s words are:

1. Conscious (common misspelling: concious): This adjective (meaning “awake” or “aware”) features an sc consonant combination that represents a sound more commonly represented in English words by sh. The cs pattern is much less common, and does not make the same sound. A single c can sometimes make a similar sound (as in precious), which is why it’s easy to get this word wrong. Similar word: conscience (but ocean).

2. Definitely (common misspelling: definately): This adverb (meaning “certainly”) features an unstressed third syllable (more on syllable stress and intonation in a later Blog post!), represented by a symbol called a “schwa” (or ə) in phonetics. The problem is that in English literally any vowel can be a schwa! This makes it important to not only listen to the way the word is pronounced, but to also pay attention to the way it’s spelled.

3. Environment (common misspelling: enviroment): English is full of so-called “silent letters,” or letters that don’t represent a particular sound but are necessary for words to be spelled correctly. In this case the problem is once again the suffix, -ment, that changes the word from one noun (“environ,” meaning “surrounding area”) to a different noun (“environment,” with a similar but more general meaning). As noted above, suffixes can often be added directly to the stem of a word without a spelling change, and this is what happens here. However, the pronunciation of an n followed immediately by an m makes the n almost “disappear,” so it’s easy to forget the n. Similar words: govern/government.

4. Knowledge (common misspelling: knowlege): This noun form of the verb “to know” has an -edge suffix, in which the d isn’t really pronounced. This is just something that you need to remember (if it helps, remember that the edge of something also has a d; without it (ege), it looks like it would be pronounced something like “eeg”).

5. Forty (common misspelling: fourty): This is a strange case in which the number “four” changes spelling and drops the u in “forty,” which just means “four tens” (but not in “fourteen,” which means “fourth ten”). The reason is lost to history, but naturally even native speakers occasionally make this mistake, so it’s just something to try to remember. You can also write it using numerals of course (40).

BONUS: Special case: the ough combination. Of all the frustrations English learners encounter in learning to spell and pronounce English words, those with the letter combination o-u-g-h are perhaps the most difficult. While very common, the letters represent various sounds, including those in some of the words listed below; most confusingly, the g and h are never pronounced! Ough can represent:

1. A long o sound in “though” (rhymes with “go”);

2. A long u sound in “through” or “slough”¹ (rhymes with “do”);

3. A short u sound in “tough” and “enough” (rhymes with “stuff”);

4. A short o sound in “cough” or “thought” (rhymes with “doff” or “bought”);

5. An au diphthong in “plough” and “bough” (rhymes with “cow”);

6. A schwa sound (in some dialects) in “thorough.”

This has been confusing English learners for many years, as Ricky Ricardo once discovered.

The difference between the very common English words “though,” “through,” “thought” and “tough” is especially hard! Try this saying if you really want to practice these sounds:

“English pronunciation is difficult. It can be mastered through tough, thorough thought, though.”

Hope this helped! Please contact us if you have any questions or comments, or if you’d like to book a free appointment to see how we can help! Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next time with another mini-lesson in the ASA Blog!