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.
For medication names, I’ll pronounce every vowel like the letter name, so A is “eigh”, E is “ee”, I is “eye”, O is “Oh”, U is “you” and Y is “why”.
So Ibuprofen is “eye-byoo-proh-feen”
Not sure if this actually counts for the question, but I had a friend who called the Hittites “hitty-titties” when we had a Bible class together, as a way to remember them for a test. I still think of that whenever I come across the word Hittite.
That’s a good one! Maybe not quite on top, but still a good answer. I think it’d be like how they teach us directions as kids: Never Eat Shredded Wheat, Never Eat Soggy Weiners,… Just looked up how others remember this, and some of them are NSFW. 😂
I’m convinced most people learning English have at some point resolved to pronouncing wed-nes-day and be-a-u-ti-ful in their head just to remember the spelling.
not me, but I also have aphantasia and no inner voice that I can hear so that may be why.
I always think of Bruce Almighty
I just thought of another one… Yogurt and yoghurt. And yes, I definitely do the Wed-nes-day thing, too!
Wed-NES-day
If you say it rapidly, it is effectively “We’n’sday,” haha.
🎮
When trying to remember how to spell Oracle I always have to recite
One
Rich
Asshole
Called
Larry
EllisonYou would think working in IT for over 20 years I would remember how to spell one of the worst databases ever.
The nice thing about my native language is that it’s pretty phonetically consistent with its spelling, so whenever I needed to remember the spelling of a word in english I could just remember how it would sound when said in my native language :3
What’s your native language? English has so many rules and exceptions.
Lithuanian :3
Polymer or phosphate?
There are no rules. Only exceptions.
My language is overly complicated in many aspects, but I do appreciate the simplicity of spelling
When I was a kid, i was taught “Oh U Lonely Duck”, for Would, Could, Should.
This is really good! I’m keeping this for when I have nieces and nephews to teach.
It took me way too long to figure out what you meant and how this would be a help. I first thought it must be a song
I still don’t get it?
O-U-L-D
Took me a sec too
Ahhh lol I see now thank you Lemmy user 😍
I always had the worst time with the mess of vowels in “beautiful”. Then in high school I had a crush on a girl named Bea. Thus was was born “Bea, u beautiful”
I also grew up in Canada, I do my spelling freestyle. Half my apps use my system settings so they use the Canadian dictionary, and the other half seems to default to US spelling
Sometimes I’d look up the spelling on a word, and you’d see the charts that show US, UK, and Canadian spelling for words. Usually the Canadian entry would show both other versions as acceptable.
At the end of the day, as long as you’re understood, it doesn’t really matter
Embrace the red squigglies, follow your heart and don’t let your computer tell you what to do
There are so many words that are squiggles under words when my documents are set to “English (Australia)”… Program vs programme, feces vs faeces (I swear I don’t just talk about bodily functions all the time - it’s part of my job).
I did write “candy” on one of my first Food Act Orders that I wrote here in AUS, and my boss wanted to look over them before I sent them out. She circled it in red and wrote “What is this”. Granted, she was a very peculiar individual and I don’t think she ever left her city to explore what was out there.
If anyone has a good trick for occasion and occurrence, I’m all ears. They’re worse than USB-A ports for me.
Hmm… Might be a roundabout way, but occurrence could be that good things occur in threes… So 3 C’s. I don’t know what to do about the double R’s though.
If you’re a good typist there’s a trick:
Picture a keyboard, then a pair of hands coming up to the home row. Then imagine the hands typing the word.
“Muscle memory” and how humans use written language means we 100% can type a word (spelled correctly) but not consciously remember the exact order of the letters. To our conscious brains, the exact order just isn’t really important. But typing is like riding a bike, if you’re good at you’re not consciously typing every letter.
Like, when riding a bike you think “turn left” and your body pulls off a bunch of complicated movements and sleight adjustments. Think “type antidisestablishmentarianism” and your fingys do the spelling.
What’s really useful with that trick, is using it to remember passwords and other “nonsense” strings. Just imagine yourself typing it over and over until you trick your unconscious mind into memorizing the sequence.
This is legitimately how I think out words, I learned how to spell by typing
Field and shield
EVERYTIME
Sounds like a magazine for Medieval knights
Separate has A Rat in it.
And separate is what a paring knife does
I’ve never heard of either of these memory tricks, but hey, whatever works!
Connect-I-cut
Oh, good one. I forgot that I used to say this as a kid!
I can’t believe Australians pronounce “diarrhea” in this way. There is literally no “o!” Are you serious?
As an Australian and sounding it out to myself more than a few times I would say its more die-OH-rhee-ah. But the fuck do I know?
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.
