# Misspeltmost Words in English - French and Latin Rooted?



## Unoverwordinesslogged

All words get misspelt but (notwithstanding texting and missaid words) the most misspelt (and abbreviated) words in English seem to be of invasive French and Latin and Greek extraction rather than the native insular Saxon methinks. 

Is it known in learned circles whether the most misspelt words in English are indeed French, Latin and Greek, and most importantly - why?


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## berndf

Can you define "misspelling" and how you distinguish that from "natural evolution" of words?


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

berndf said:


> Can you define "misspelling" and how you distinguish that from "natural evolution" of words?



why?


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## Riverplatense

I just could imagine that French words brought into English also transfer not only a non-phonetic spelling, but also a «foreign» one. Therefore words like _doubt_ or _beauty _might be particularly difficult. However, (1) a lot of those words were integrated into a more or less «English» spelling and (2) I'm not an expert at all in this field.


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## berndf

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> why?


Because the question doesn't really makes sense.


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## Riverplatense

berndf said:


> Can you define "misspelling" and how you distinguish that from "natural evolution" of words?



Can you really bring together the spelling with natural evolution? Phonological processes, morphological or syntactical ones of course, but isn't a writing system necessarily prescriptive?


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## berndf

Riverplatense said:


> but isn't a writing system necessarily prescriptive?


No.


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Riverplatense said:


> I just could imagine that French words brought into English also transfer not only a non-phonetic spelling, but also a «foreign» one. Therefore words like _doubt_ or _beauty _might be particularly difficult. However, (1) a lot of those words were integrated into a more or less «English» spelling and (2) I'm not an expert at all in this field.



So (if I understand rightly) this goes to proof that 'Saxon' English is way way more inbedded amongst those whom speak it rather than the invasive ones?


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## berndf

What is to prove what? It is still not clear what you mean. "Misspelled" when and by whom and what is a misspelling as distinct from a change? You have to formulate a more concrete question to give us a change to give meaningful answers.


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## Riverplatense

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> So (if I understand rightly) this goes to proof that 'Saxon' English is way way more inbedded amongst those whom speak it rather than the invasive ones?



Yes, that's what I suppose. Also because of the number of known developments. Even though there are a lot of French-originated words in the English language, I doubt whether there are enough in order to understand certain analogies.



berndf said:


> No.



Okay, so maybe it's a question of terminology, too. What I wanted to say: When there are grammatical rules natives start not to follow any more, I'd say that's natural evolution. That's how the supposed 8 IE cases syncretized or how «irregular» forms can start to be built analogically. Can you really bring together something completely artificial like a writing system with the oral use of a language? The pronunciation of single words can change naturally, but can their writing?

Edit: I mean, one can argue whether it's _you and me_ or _you and I_. But you can't spell the word _daughter _as *_dawter._


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## berndf

Riverplatense said:


> Can you really bring together something completely artificial like a writing system with the oral use of a language?


People use phonetic writing systems like ours to write represent what they say and when what they say changes then what they write changes. That is quite normal, isn't it? Some languages may have longer periods where the spelling is artificially frozen (e.g. you still white the the <gh> in light although it has ceased to be pronounced centuries ago). But that doesn't change the principle.

If you take _doubt_, compared to it's French etymon _doute_, it lost the mute -e and it got a mute -b- inserted, obviously a learned re-Latinization. Which of this is a "misspelling"? Both? None?

Now compare _sheriff_ with its OE etymon _scirgerefa_. Which one has more changed, the word of French or the word of AS origin? Again, which of these changes are "misspellings"?


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Sorry, I should of said 'British English' rather than say Jamaican English or American English and so on and so and so.


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

berndf said:


> People use phonetic writing systems like ours to write represent what they say and when what they say changes then what they write changes. That is quite normal, isn't it? Some languages may have longer periods where the spelling is artificially frozen (e.g. you still white the the <gh> in light although it has ceased to be pronounced centuries ago). But that doesn't change the principle.
> 
> If you take _doubt_, compared to it's French etymon _doute_, it lost the mute -e and it got a mute -b- inserted, obviously a learned re-Latinization. Which of this is a "misspelling"? Both? None?
> 
> Now compare _sheriff_ with its OE etymon _scirgerefa_. Which one has more changed, the word of French or the word of AS origin? Again, which of these changes are "misspellings"?



See where your coming from, nevertheless I reckon most folk whom are taught 'nowadays spelt' English words still go on to misspell more the 'nowadays French, Latin and Greek ones they have been taught..no?


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## Riverplatense

berndf said:


> People use phonetic writing systems like ours to write represent what they say and when what they say changes then what they write changes. That is quite normal, isn't it?



It is, but this change doesn't occur as spontaneously and because of the real speaking as phonological or morphological changes. When there is a monophthongization, then no institution is involved, but but people start to pronounce, e. g., /ou/ as /u/. That's a natural development. If you want to integrate this development into the writing system, you do need an institution organizing how people write. How is it possible that the grapheme combination ‹ea› in English still is used in order to represent different sounds? I'd say: Because the writing is not as natural as the pronunciation. Good old Probus couldn't stop the development of Latin, but institutions can stop the development of a writing system.

Of course, if there were no clear rules or if we all used IPA, the writing would change as the pronunciation does.


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

berndf said:


> If you take _doubt_, compared to it's French etymon _doute_, it lost the mute -e and it got a mute -b- inserted, obviously a learned re-Latinization. Which of this is a "misspelling"? Both? None?
> 
> Now compare _sheriff_ with its OE etymon _scirgerefa_. Which one has more changed, the word of French or the word of AS origin? Again, which of these changes are "misspellings"?



Maybe not clear enough in the opening post, but we are talking about the misspelling (and whyfors) of modernday English words not which word are most differently spelt from the historic spellings.

Late Modern English words (whenever that started from) indeed, when one thinks of the how many exotic French words got into English in moderntimes by dint of 'learned' English hands rather than the Norman myth, one would think definately French words are the most misspelt


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## Unoverwordinesslogged

Riverplatense said:


> But you can't spell the word _daughter _as *_dawter._



Not even on the grounds of Bernd's "natural evolution" ?


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## berndf

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> Late Modern English words (whenever that started from) indeed, when one thinks of the how many exotic French words got into English in moderntimes by dint of 'learned' English hands rather than the Norman myth, one would think *definately* French words are the most misspelt


You mean like the spelling mistake above? That is a direct Latin borrowing and not a French one and it is indeed a modern one, albeit Early and not Late modern English. In Early Modern English it was fashionable to use Greek and Latin words in English much like it is fashionable to use English words today in other European languages. In such words many distinctions that are unproblematical in Romance languages are difficult in English because most unstressed vowels are reduced to Schwas and this reduction is not reflected in spelling while it is with most words of OE origin because the reduction happened earlier than the fixing of the spelling.


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## Dan2

Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> ...amongst those whom speak it...





Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> I reckon most folk whom are taught 'nowadays spelt' English words still go on to misspell more the 'nowadays French, Latin and Greek ones they have been taught..no?


I don't know... some people misspell the very common native word "who"...


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## Stoggler

There's a certain irony that posts asking about incorrect spelling have a good number of incorrect spellings.


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## Gavril

I distinctly remember spelling _have to _(as in _you have to do it_) as "haf to" when I was first learning to write. I've also probably confused _to_ with _too _and _full_ with -_ful-_ (as in _beauti*ful*_ or _*ful*fill_) at various points. I would be surprised if English speakers didn't sometimes confuse the spellings of _right_ and _wright_ (both of Anglo-Saxon origin) as well.


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## wtrmute

I apologise in advance, Unoverwordinesslogged, if it seems like I am making fun of you; that is not my intention.  However, pointing out a few of your own spelling mistakes might reinforce my theory.



Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> So (if I understand rightly) this goes to *proof* that 'Saxon' English is way way more *inbedded* amongst those whom speak it rather than the invasive ones?





Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> Sorry, I should *of* said 'British English' rather than say Jamaican English or American English and so on and so and so.





Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> See where *your* coming from, nevertheless I reckon most folk whom are taught 'nowadays spelt' English words still go on to misspell more the 'nowadays French, Latin and Greek ones they have been taught..no?



As you can see, in the three posts above, I've put the spelling mistakes in bold: in the first post, we have _prove_ and _embedded_, which are of French origin; in the second one, we have _have_, which is indubitably Saxon; and in the third, _you're_, which is Saxon again.  So in this small example, we have half Saxon and half French examples...

From my experience, however, the most common spelling errors by natives in English are the confusions between _it's/its_, _you're/your_ and _they're/their/there_.  Those words are all Saxon (well, _they_ is a Norse loan, I think), but since they're homophonous, they're often mistaken for one another in writing.

Therefore, please don't fall into the trap of thinking that Norman French words are "invader" words and that they're somehow less well understood by the English populace than "native" Saxon forms.  To most people living today, an English word is an English word and whether it came with the Normans or with the Saxons or whether it is a native Brittonic word.  It depends on whether there are opportunities for misspelling: different words with a very similar pronunciation or lots of unstressed vowels which come to be pronounced the same.


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## Riverplatense

wtrmute said:


> From my experience, however, the most common spelling errors by natives in English are the confusions between _it's/its_, _you're/your_ and _they're/their/there_. Those words are all Saxon



That's an interesting point, and my consideration might have been to ration-based, since you can easily deduce the difference between _you're_ and _your_ or _they're_ and _there _when you think about it, whereas the difference between _fair _and _fare _or _flour _and _flower _needs some etymological or, precisely, orthographic skills you really have to learn.



Unoverwordinesslogged said:


> Not even on the grounds of Bernd's "natural evolution" ?



No, because when there are orthographic rules, people respect them or try to. A lot of Greek words are spelled like about 2500 years ago, and there are, e. g., six graphemes/grapheme combinations you pronounce as /i/ today. It would be completely impossible to make the Greeks use classical morphology or the French Latin syntax. But you can make them write in an «obsolete» way. The same goes for personal communication. When two friends talk to each other, they won't care about normative grammar, but when they write messages, they will usually respect the orthographic rules.

Edit: Of course it's «possible», but not reasonable. Languages are natural, writing systems are artificial and are used for society needs. Polymorphism wouldn't work, learning of languages, interlingual communication would be by far more difficult. One can't regulate the evolution of languages, but one can stop (for a determined time) the evolution of a writing system.


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