![]() The letter i at the end of a word in Italian indicates that it is plural. spaghettiĪnother word with Italian origins that is a challenge to spell is spaghetti. If this spelling trips you up too much, you could try the British English word for zucchini instead, which comes from French: courgette. Similar to broccoli, zucchini is a word from Italian that uses an iat the end to make an ee sound and has a double c that makes a k sound. However, broccoli is a word that comes from Italian, where the ee sound is represented with the letter i. Besides this complication, you may be tempted to spell the ending with a y or ee to make the lee sound. broccoliīroccoli also features a double c to make a k sound. Throw in a double s, and accessory is a real challenge to spell correctly. Unlike accommodate, where the double c makes a single k sound, in accessory, the first c makes a k sound, and the second c makes an s sound. The word accessory breaks the pattern we have seen so far (remember what we said about the rules of English spelling being inconsistent?). The word comes from the Latin vacuus, meaning “empty.” 6. Instead of a double c, vacuum features the rare double u ( continuum and muumuu are others with this strange combination). ![]() Speaking of words with double c, one word you might expect to have such a spelling but does not is vacuum. The word accommodate sounds as if it could be spelled with three o‘s, or maybe there is a uin there? But no, there are no u‘s and the first letter is an a, of all things. But what makes spelling this word tricky isn’t the consonants, but rather the vowels. The word accommodate also uses a double c… and throws in a double m for good measure. Why exactly does English have so many different rules and variations when it comes to spelling? Learn a thing or two about its messy history here. ⚡️ What makes English a difficult language to spell? This double c comes from the Latin origin of the word, the equivalent of the prefix oc- combined with the verb cāsus, meaning roughly “to have befallen.” Also, you may be tempted to add another s, but there is only one in occasion. Part of what makes spelling this word challenging are the hard c (like a k) sounds, spelled with a double c. The word occasion also features the letters cand s, but here they are not making the same ssound. It might help you to know that the word narcissistic ultimately comes from the Greek nárkissos, a plant name associated with narcotics. It can also be hard to remember where to place the double s. Similar to necessary, narcissistic is challenging to spell because of the c and s letters that make the same sound. Do you “c” two s‘s? Ask yourself this to make sure there is first one c and then a double s in necessary. How do you remember where and how many c or s letters you need? Well, take a look at the word. This, combined with the use of double consonants that don’t change how the word is pronounced, makes necessary tricky to spell. One of the things that makes English hard to spell is that there are letters that can-but don’t always-make the same sounds, such as cand s. ![]() They are some of the trickiest words to spell in English. ![]() If you struggle spelling some of these challenging words, just know you are not alone. No wonder English is practically the only language spelling competitions are held in! To further confuse matters, words in English have different spellings in different countries. But the English language uses a mix of spellings and pronunciations from Latin, Greek, French, German, and many others. In most languages, the way words are spelled ( graphemes) consistently relate to the way they sound ( phonemes). ![]() As any participant in a spelling bee can tell you, correctly spelling words in the English language is not always easy. ![]()
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