Fun Facts about Spelling

Spelling tip 7: Take an interest in words. 

Enjoy the quirkiness of English spelling, the rules and exceptions, and know why words are spelt/spelled (American) the way they are, and then you won't get frustrated with spelling and you'll learn, remember and understand spellings. 

In this lesson, we're looking at some fun facts about spelling and why there are so many words that mean the same thing or slightly different.

Some fun facts:

Lots of words to do with the nose begin with the letter pattern 'sn' - snout, sniff, snub, snot, snore, snort, snozzle, snooty, sneeze.

Plumber has a silent b in there because it comes from the Roman/Latin word"plumbum" meaning lead piping used by plumbers.

knock, knee, knuckle, gnaw, gnat are all Viking (Old Norse) words, the 'k' and 'g' were pronounced up until the 17th Century but became silent most likely because it was easier to say them without the ‘k’ and ‘g’.

NO English words end in 'v' or 'u'. There's always an 'e' on the end: give, have, love, eve, twelve, glue, rescue, blue, true.

But we have a few exceptions, which are either abbreviations, slang, ancient words, or words borrowed from other languages.
For example:  rev and flu are abbreviations: rev - revolution or reverend, flu - influenza.
Menu - a borrowed word from French
chav and spit are slang.
'you' is a very old Anglo-Saxon/ Old English word.

NO English words end in 'j'. The sound is made by -dge or -ge: bridge, badge, hedge, marriage, bandage, age.  But we have some foreign words like haj, raj

Let's look at why we have so many words that mean the same thing or slightly different.
English developed from the tribes that invaded us: the Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings and finally the French. Check out the videos below