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I use to think that on the contrary, it's easier. As Italian and Finnish is read how it's written, we focus more on correct spelling. Or at least that's my gut feeling.
How about immigrate / emigrate? That seems to be quite hard too.
I never found those difficult, it might be because they do exist in Italiano as well (immigrare/emigrare) with the same different meaning.
There are millions of names that have no "correct" spelling in the 26-letter Roman alphabet, because their only correct form is in another alphabet, from which there is no perfect letter-to-letter matchup.. For a while, Fox News used to use "Usama" bin Laden, but then changed it back again, because Arabic vowels are inexact to the English-speaker's ear and the sound of them corresponds to the adjacent consonant. For decades, Yugoslavia was spelled with a J, as they do in their language, and then English-speakers changed it to a Y. Croatians spell their name Hrvatska, and pronounce it almost the same as Croatia.
Greek has no sounds of D or B, and Delta is pronounced TH and Beta is pronounced V. If they borrow a foreign name like Baden, they spell it with Greek alphabet equivalents of Mpanten. If they spelled it Baden, it would be pronounced Vathen by Greeks.
The Roman-alphabet media, in each language, has arbitrarily assigned Roman spellings to foreign names, which sometimes get changed, but are "correct" only in terms of media style guides.
By the way, in respect to immigrate/emigrate, both words are correct, according to the direction of movement. Immigrate means to move in, and emigrate means move out. Every such person is both at the same time. A Mexican who moves to the USA ia an Immgrant with respect to the USA, and an Emigrant with respect to Mexico. He is a Mexican Immigrant, in that he is an immigrant who has Mexican nationality, but he is also a Mexican Emigrant, in that he is a person who emigrated from Mexico. Which word you use depends on the reference point you want your listener to attribute to your own meaning.
I think most can blame mis-spells on Auto-correct built in to their computers nowadays....I know I have had to edit more posts than ever since I got my new laptop..Drives me crazy.
In Canada fo r example many words such as color/colour indicate my color as INCORRECT...But up here we don't spell it with the "U" But knowing that makes me smile..so try to remember to include the "U's" as I post with mostly American's..Us Canadian's are non-plussed by such things
I'm sure those who post from outside of North America..and English is NOT first language can get confused...Personally, I'm impressed how well everybody handles it!!
Lyndarn, we spell colour with a "u" in Canada. lol
Same for neighbourhood, humour, favourite, and a bunch of other stuff.
So yeah, I agree with you.....auto-correct it screwing with people. lol!
I use to think that on the contrary, it's easier. As Italian and Finnish is read how it's written, we focus more on correct spelling. Or at least that's my gut feeling.
How about immigrate / emigrate? That seems to be quite hard too.
As xander already said, we don't have problems with immigrate / emigrate because those words are extremely similar to the Italian immigrare/emigrare. This similarities between English and Italian (for the Latin derived words) could be useful in a lot of cases, but can also give some trouble when the spelling are really similar but not exactly the same (for example "relevant" vs "rilevante", or "particular" vs "particolare").
But I can't do the same with English, because in English words with the same pronunciation could have a different spelling, and words with the same spelling could have a different pronunciation!
The main problem that I have with English in practice is that I can't predict the spelling of a word when I hear it, nor I can predict the pronunciation of a word when I read it for the first time. In practice I have to remember the pronunciation and the letter by letter spelling of every new English word I learn.
Ridiculous is a word i always have difficulty with, but there are others too.
In English i always find it difficult to spell words correctly as i'm used to speak Italian where almost everything is read as it's written, when i speak i am never able to do it as i should. Something i find easy when it comes to English is grammar especially when compared to Italian.
I saw the word "pollinate" in a book the other day, and I thought it was misspelled. I looked it up, and sure enough, the process of distributing poll e n is to poll i nate. For reasons that are completely mystifying to me.
Not true at all, I have spelled that word wrong since 3rd grade, for some reason I just cannot get it right and I am not illiterate nor am I poorly educated. I just cannot seem to spell that word properly.
Uh huh.
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