Learn English: The English Language Community

Here's the first one:
Pschychology is often spelt incorrectly as Psycology or Pcycology

Here's the second one:
Champagne is normally spelt wrong.

Native English speakers would write champagne is normally spelled wrong. Spelt is considered an archaic form of the verb.

Interesting topic Namrata, Thanks for putting it up. Interestingly, I have always written it as psychology. I didn't know "Pschychology" is an option.

Yes Amit, I have seen champaigne, champaine, champaign (which means an extensive tract of level open land; it's also a town in Illinois) and even shampaine!

> Misspelling is itself a word, which could end up being spelt wrongly as "mispelling" or "misspeling"

>

Thanks for your suggestions on using "spelt" vs. "spelled" Linda. I did send a feeler to my dictionary (Word Web), on which one I should use. It usually tells me if it's archaic, but it did not for this one. Some research on big Google does show that most of the authoritative resources like news sites, universities, etc., prefer "spelled". So we can safely say that all dictionaries are not comprehensive companions. Nevertheless, I highly recommend Word Web as it has some great features and is very easy to use. You can simply select a word on your screen and go Ctrl+Alt+W on your keyboard and it gives you the meaning, and other great options like pronunciation (audio also), related words, synonyms, antonyms, etc.

Ok, coming back to the main topic, pronunciation is another tricky word, which could go as pronounciation.

An interesting point to note is that words that have double letters occurring twice are often confusing. Consider these (wrong ones in brackets):

occurring (ocurring or ocurring)
misspelled (mispelled or misspeled)
accessible (accesible or acessible)
accidentally (accidentaly or accidently)
accommodate (accomodate or acommodate)
address (adress or addres)
millennium (millenium or milennium)
stubbornness (stubborness or stubornness)
succeed (suceed or succed)
succession (succesion or sucession)
suppress (supress or suppres)
unnecessary (unnecesary or uneccesary)
possessive (posessive or possesive)

As are the ones, which we believe could do with a double letter twice like these (wrong ones in brackets again):


parallel (parrallel)
questionnaire (questionnairre)
necessary (neccessary)
millionaire (millionnaire)
preferred (prefferred)
referred (refferred)
cigarette (cigarrette)
beginning (begginning)
across (accross)

Boy, English does have it's fair share of nuances and idiosyncrasies (why not idioscyncracies?). Ah, I know that this word mostly fits in for individuals, but heck I will go ahead and give it a wider coverage for if it's there, why not use it for more situations and entities? Logical? Someone has to change the language and give the word "archaic" more meaning :-) LOL.

Great! I am really enjoying this discussion now.
Thank you everyone for the wonderful support!

Here's another one with Double spellings
Assistance (written as Assisstance and Asisstance)

Another word is Maintenance (Spelled/spelt as maintainence, mantanance, mentainance to name a few)

It's my first post here at WizIQ, so hello everybody!
Namrata you wrote 'Pschychology', and forgive me, but I think that there are maybe two spellings for it. I've found over 91.200 occurrences for 'Pschycology' (without the second 'ch') at Google and approximately 23.100 for 'Pschychology'. So which one is the right one? The one with more occurrences? This is if there is a right one between them.
Also, this is a new spelling for me, so it got me intrigued! As Jagdeep, I know and use the spelling 'psychology', and looking up all these spellings in some dictionaries I could only find the 'psychology' one.
Thanks for the wonderful post.

Thanks Shiva for the insight...
I'll get searching and surely bring out the correct Spellings

Sorry Silvia Rina I called you Shiva! Spelling mistakes... I apologize

That's all right! I kind of liked to be called by a Hindu god name. I understand this god culturally represents 'transformation' which is what we're always looking for to our lives, isn't it?
So, don't bother. Everything is all right

Here are some cartoons on typos you may find helpful for your lessons: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/spelling_mistakes.asp

Great Silvia. Thanks

When it comes to Spellings, there is a lot of confusion between words with IE and words with EI.

So we have field (IE) and receive (EI)

What about other words with IE and EI?

@Jagdeep Singh Pannu
I should have said that spelt was considered archaic by American speakers of English. It dropped out of common use as a verb about 100 years ago.

People should be aware that (1) Google search results show how people spell words, not necessarily correct spelling and (2) the English is in a constant state of flux. The preferred spelling today may be a secondary spelling in 20 years.