Growing up in Canada, I had to contend with learning two different spellings and pronunciations for words like “schedule”, “colour”, “omelette”, “zed” vs “zee”, “-ise” vs “-ize”, and so on and so forth, so I had to come up with some little tricks to remember how to spell things. Sometimes I’d put on a mental Quebecois or English accent.
Other ones like diarrhea was “Die-err-HEE-uh”, and now that I’m in Australia, it’s most definitely “Die-err-HOE-uh”. 😂
I also recite the ABCs more often than I should. I know a lot of you do, too.
What are some ways that you thought of to help you remember how to spell things? Any language counts.


Oh, okay; the original comment put it as “roe,” the penultimate syllable. That was what I found to be bizarre.
Me too which is why I literally sat here saying diarrhoea to myself for 5 minutes straight.
I’ve had a big day so I haven’t had time to respond to all of the comments, but this cracked me up so I have to explain now before sleep, haha. I’m so sorry for laughing. What I meant is just for the spelling of diarrhea vs diarrhoea.
However, I did spend a lot of time in regional Victoria waaaay out west (7 years) and they really did border on saying “diarr-roy-uh”… Or “diarr-ROYEE-uh”. There’s really no way of putting some Aussie pronunciations in to words. Maybe occa. When I first saw “naur”, it was so odd, but it kinda works.