English: A Caught on the Bound Original Series - Episode I: Spelling Test

As promised, the first installment of a Caught on the Bound's week-long series on the English language - its oddities, powers, foibles, and greatest hits! We begin with a spelling test. Don't worry, you won't have to spell anything. Here's the test: by looking, see if you can tell which of the following words are misspelled:

supercede

conceed

procede

idiosyncracy

concensus

accomodate

impressario

irresistable

rhythym

opthalmologist

diptheria

anamoly

afficianado

caesarian

grafitti

How many do you think are misspelled? Some are obviously wrong. Others look right. But they're all wrong. As a student of Japanese, I lamented the fact that each kanji character could have a number of pronunciations or meanings with no consistent reading. As it turns out, English is just as often a matter of recognizing words as a cluster of letters that phonetically make little sense. Wired how you can udreanstd tihs sneetncee ins't it? Atefr a pniot, we sotp sunodnig wrods out and sratt momeizrnig tehm. Spelling correctly in English often requires us to simply "know" rather than logically sound a word out. Now, the correct spellings for the words listed above: supersede, concede, proceed, idiosyncrasy, consensus, accommodate, impresario, irresistible, rhythm, ophthalmologist, diphtheria, anomaly, aficionado, cesarean, and graffiti

It all seems so stupid, doesn't it? But would you really feel comfortable spelling everything phonetically? Wud yoo rilly feel komfterbul spelleeng evrytheeng foenetiklee? As you can see, it's flat-out impossible without a standard phonetic alphabet (which dictionaries employ). Some of you will even quibble with the way I phonetically sounded out some of those words in the above sentence. Now that we've been thurolee pissed off by English, we'll look next at its more endearing qualities...