Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Does a Word...

Did you read this, or was it read to you?

Well not "knife" but yes sometimes an alien spelling seems to show up from a common word...

Then they say "i before e except after c" THEIR ya go!!!

I can read it. I love to read and have taught myself to read rather well. The spelling is getting better but it is a long way from good. I can still stump my spell checker on a good day and on a bad day... well it can get ugly.

Often!

Ambivalent

One of my writer friends still suffers from the effects of his father's smart-ass prank of teaching him the alphabet backward � z, y, x, w, v, u, t, s, r, q, p, o, n, m, l, k, j, i, h, g, f, e, d, c, b, a.

Jerry goes through a kind of Hell whenever he tries to look-up something in a dictionary or similar reference work. Even the telephone buttons don't look right.

None of them "ph" for "f" words ever look right.

I spell barrel wrong about half the time! Usually barell then correct myself....

Mike

Easy cross-word puzzles provide pretty good therapy.

Try a cross-word-puzzle book off the rack at Safeway for starters, but don't waste money on a subscription. Buy 'em by the bundle (16 for $10.95, 8 for $7.95) at Dell Magazines Direct � 6 Prowitt Street � Norwalk, CT 06855. (The old ones in these bundles are just as good as new ones.)

They'll do wonders for developing your awareness of the letters in the middle of a word.

I might come in handy if he was a drunk but sounds like a tough way to go through life.

Knife is easy to remember. Just remember the "K" in knife is silent, like the "P" in swimming....

Some vastly over-educated friends of mine puzzled for hours trying to guess the "k" word that one of 'em had put forth. When they finally just gave-up, he told 'em that the word was napkin � which he spelled k-n-a-p-k-i-n.

Ken,

Do you know WHY there is a silent "K" in knife, or know? Where did that come from? How about Ptarmigan? What demented soul decided that Worcestershire is pronounced "woostershure"?

Linguistics is a hobby of mine, but it gives me headaches at times...

Ed

An American couple on a protracted visit to England repeatedly struggled with the jammed-up pronunciations of English names. Their hosts were constantly correcting them.

They got even when their English hosts came to see America.

"We'd like to visit Niagara Falls," one of the Brits said.

"Where?"

"Niagara Falls."

"Spell it."

"N, i, a, g, a, � "

"Oh, you mean Niffles!"

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

I don't know, but I suspect that it's not a matter of a silent letter being added but a formerly pronounced letter being no longer pronounced � like the c between the r and the t in Arctic.

LOL ...

uhoh, guess i'm in trouble 'cause I do it all the time at 17! Well, I guess dyslexia, bi-polar, and poor eyesight will do that to ya!

Perspicacious therad, Pat.

Have a nice enenning.

CGT

Bushlit!

Context enables a reader to untangle such a mess, but not as easily or as rapidly as reading correctly spelled prose.

The Cambridge finding applies only to occasionally muddled words in otherwise properly spelled sentences, not to sentences that comprise nothing but scrambled words. Here again, the enabling elixir is context.

Scrambled words all by themselves (in no context) are unreadable puzzles.

utsendnard?