This story is a little funny and a little sad. It took me halfway through the development draft of my fantasy series to decide a name for the MC. I want a name that the reader has a strong connection to and yet sounds like a person's name. So, I'm listening to the 'The Neon God' by WASP and hear the song...Asylum #9. So, I name the MC Asylyn. This is where the story turns funny and sad. I had never looked at the track listing and...I am from the American South. Yeppers, lots of lazy vowels, lilts and drawls. You see where this is going because I never checked on the spelling of asylum. I spelled it phonetically. I have always been bothered by the spelling of her name. So, I decide to look up the etymology of the world for an alternate spelling. Well, through out the development draft, and the 1st draft of the first two books, I spelled Asylyn...Assylyn. The second 'S' always bothered me. Last night I discovered I had been spelling the word wrong the entire time. I'll go to the corner now.
I've told this before but I will again: Somebody on another forum posted about their character Smegma. They were not aware that smegma was already a word, and not one most writers would want for their protagonist. If it makes you feel better, I was 27 when I learned that Arkansas and Arkansaw are not, in fact, two different places. Who the hell pronounces 'sas' as 'saw'?!
I can never, for the life of me, ever spell "necessary" right the first time.(nope, not even that time) I always flip the "c" and "s"s. Spell check for the win.
My biggest issue is I'm American, but I was raised reading primarily British classical literature So I already have a problem with spelling, where I want words to be spelt phonetically, although sometime in high school spelling got easier when I realized the rules should be noted by language of origin–like "ie" vs "ei" makes sense by pronunciation of the origin is German, or the superfluous vowels and weird consonants make a spot more sense if I realize its French. Et cetera But because I was so poor at spelling, I tended to latch on quite desperately to all & any spellings of words I've actually read So now I have acquired a bastardized spelling system: Theatre instead of "theater" Labour & Honour (etc) vs "labor" & "honor" (the missing u just looks so wrong to me now) Moustache vs "mustache" Enquiry vs "inquiry" Aging vs "ageing" Luster vs "lustre" Equaled vs "equalled" Vaporize vs "vaporise" Analyse vs "analyze" Sulfate vs "sulphate" Sulphur vs "sulfur" I switch between license & licence, defence & defense, but offense is never offence My spelling is a hot mess of everything, and autoword has a very difficult time keeping me in line or understanding what I've spelt at times
I'm a godawful speller. I have no visual acuity when it comes to words. It's like I can't remember what they look like. And any word that has double consonants shuts my brain down. I'll know that there's supposed to be double letters in the word but have no idea which ones go where. A word like parallel will swim into my mind as parralel or paralell and I have to fiddle with it before I get it right. Vowels too. E's A's and I's are all interchangeable in my world. I've had this problem since I was old enough to be tested on spelling. Must be a wire crossed in my brain somewhere because I read and write and play with words constantly and have practiced writing certain words over and over. Nothing helps. It's not all words but a seemingly large subset of similar sounds and syllables that screw me up. For example, I got nearly every word in this post right the first time. Including "syllable" which shocked the hell out of me. I sometimes give myself a fist pump when I spell a big word right the first time. Like apotheosis, prestidigitation, or malfeasance (I got the first two right but flubbed the final "a" of malfeasance with an "e"). But a word like berate? Nope. I'll go to my grave believing its spelled berrate because my issues with double letters have led me to imagine them where they don't exist.
Ditto. And I can't spell the word that means 'runny poo.' Or, as I've discovered since writing, and writing about, poetry, the word 'rithum'. I know there's a Y and a TH in there somewhere, but I never know where they go.
I am the same with words such as "writing" or was that "writting" and "personell" or was that "personel" or "personnel" when referring to your staff or was that "refferring". and don't get me started on dieing or dyeing........uhhhhh
Bureau (?) is one I always have a stab at and then defer to spell check. Same with fuchsia (?) [Have I finally learned to spell these words?!] In my previous job we had a Very Important client whose surname was Lynch, and I invariably typed Lunch and had to correct it before sending him any emails. My colleague Guy used to get emails starting "Hello Gay" fairly frequently.
When I was a young kid, I was aware of the two words "unique" and "yooneek." I'd only ever heard "yooneek"; I'd never seen it spelled. I didn't understand why these two words were exact synonyms, but one is only used on the page and the other is only spoken. I was about eight when I finally became aware that "unique" was pronounced "yooneek." It rocked my world. My best friend told me he had the same problem with "misled." It was "miss-LED" when spoken, but "MY-zeld" on the page. It took him some time to realize that they were the same word, too. When I moved to the USA from Canada, I was rather impressed that a football team from the Yukon Territory was playing college football in the States. It took me a while to realize that commentators were abbreviating "University of Connecticut" to "U-Conn" when they talked about the teams. UConn. I thought they were saying Yukon. I visibly deflated when I realized that.
I struggle with medical and anatomical words. Diaphragm...? Huh, usually I don't get it right the first time. Arrhytmia... Nope, arrythmia? Nope. Arrhythmia??? The 'h' is silent?! Arithritis. No. Arthritis. Where did the extra 'i' come from? Words with lots of vowels that aren't pronounced as double or triple vowels, like: Bourguoise. Hah, dream on! It's bourgeoisie.
I'm with you on the medical terms, which also extends to biological, or really any scientific term.... Words like ovoviviparous will always escape me.
I do a ton of these as well! I've always just blamed Harry Potter because I don't know where else I woud've picked it up (plus my brother does the same thing). My worst one is gray/grey - I can never decide which one to use because I like how the E looks better but I know it's not really proper in AmE. Where I'm from people like to pronounce it exactly like "arthur-itis" It's a wonder I learned to spell at all.
Another that bothered me for a while was the name of the city called Boise, Idaho. Americans pronounce Boise as "BOY-zee." That just seems wrong to me because I come from Canada and I see it as a French word. My instinct wants to pronounce it as "Bwahz." I had to train myself to recognize BOY-zee as Bwahz. Now I've become comfortable with BOY-zee, and French sounds weird in my ears. The Americanization of this Canadian is nearly complete, alas, and my roots are becoming foreign to me.
I cannot get used to the American pronunciation of buoy. We say 'boy'. 'Booey' sounds hilarious to me. How do Americans pronounce 'buoyant'?
I consistently get Is and Es flipped over. Not great as an English teacher when students peg your bad spelling. I normally make a point of saying "See?! Now you don't need to feel bad about YOUR spelling, because natives are crap too." In my experience, nonnatives are much better at spelling in general; probably because they actually learn it.
