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 ...

If you're a kid learning how to write, or an adult speaker of a language with sensible spelling, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank. And even if you're a completely literate adult native ...

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 ...

English spelling is hard and needs to be taught explicitly, but most American schools fail miserably to teach children to spell. Kids who can't spell often do not read and write with proficiency ...

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 ...

Johnny in Topeka can’t read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less ...

We take for granted that English is filled with weird spellings — 'b's that are silent, 'gh' and 'ph' that sounds like 'f,' 'i's and 'e's that switch inexplicably, and more — making it complicated for ...