Spelling and Sound: Spelling Common Words in English

02/08/2026

I'm transferring my content about spelling and sound to my new Substack page, "Em's Language Shop." Look for me there. I'll shut this page down in a couple of days.

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02/21/2024

Hi everyone! I have started my Instagram videos on spelling and on phrasal verbs! Go to https://www.instagram.com/p/C3n3V6DP2ta/ to see my introduction!

02/02/2024

Sometimes even native English speakers get it wrong. And it's funny. On Tuesday, a lawmaker in the US Congress named Marjorie Taylor Greene was trying to say the word "indictable." She pronounced it "in - dick - tubble". And that's what you might think it should be.
But no!
Two problems:

a) "Indict" is a legal term. It means "to formally charge someone with a serious crime." Like many legal words in English, its spelling is different from its pronunciation for historical reasons. But Marjorie Taylor Greene is not a lawyer, nor is she a person with a good education. So she doesn't know that the word is pronounced "in- dite." The "c" is silent.

b) The fun part is that "dick" (the syllable she mispronounced) is American slang for the male reproductive organ, the p***s. So she was trying to make a legal point, but she made a dirty joke instead. As I said, she's not very smart.

01/23/2024

Now let's talk about the /k/ sound. It's more complicated than it seems.

At the beginning of a word, /k/ can be spelled ca-, co-, or cu.

Here are examples: capital, consider, culinary. In addition to the A, O, U letters following the C, we also have CR - credit, CL - close.

At the END of a syllable or word, /k/ sound is spelled -CK but only if the vowel is a short vowel.

Black
Crack
Stick
Pick

If you add an ending to these words, simply add -ing, or -ed, or -le: cracking, sticking, pickle.

If you have a long vowel (a letter sound), you'll usually spell /k/ at the end of a word with just a -ke. There are a very few but common exceptions: steak and break.

Examples: snake, take, fake.

Practice: these pairs have two different vowel sounds. One is the short sound, and the other is the long or letter sound. Try to make them sound different.

Short sound Letter sound
Tack. Take
Lack Lake
Stack Stake

Pock. Poke
Stock Stoke

Duck Doke
Muck Mope

Back Break

01/14/2024

When should you pronounce the letter "c" as a /k/ sound, and when should you pronounce "c" as a /s/ sound?

Look at the letter AFTER the "c."

If the letters -a-, -o-, -u- follow the "c," pronounce the "c" as a "k."

CAT, CAN, COP, CONSTANT, CUP

But if the letters -e-, -i-, and -y- follow the "c," pronounce the "c" as an "s."

DANCE, FANCY, PRINCE CIDER, CINNAMON, CIRCLE

Practice:
The fancy prince danced with the cozy cat.
She is constantly critical of the reception crew.
The new traffic design is circular. We're very excited!

12/29/2023

I saw a post today by a native English speaker, who wrote, "You are apart of God's plan." This is incorrect. Do you know why?

"A part" is one part of something whole. It can be a big part or a small part, but it belongs to the larger whole thing. You can see it in the drawing. To know that you are using it correctly, put the word "one" instead of the word "a." If it works correctly, you are using the spelling correctly. So we can say, "I am one part of my team."

On the other hand, "apart" means separation from the whole; it is like "away." Think of a child who is in a new school. Perhaps he doesn't know anyone and no one is talking to him on the first day because they are all shy. We see him on the playground, and he is standing "apart" from all the other children because he doesn't have friends yet.

So "a part of a group" means "together with a group."
"Apart from the group" means "away from the group."

These kinds of mistakes show how important spelling is in English.

12/25/2023

Merry Christmas! We spell "Christmas" with -ch-, but why don't we spell it with a K? It's a /k/ sound, after all.

It's because the word "Christ" or "Christus" is Greek. In Greek letters, it is Χριστός, Christos. The Χ (Greek letter "chi") has the sound /k/.

If you see a word in English that is spelled with -ch- AND is pronounced with /k/, you are definitely looking at a word that comes from Greek and was introduced into Latin many centuries ago with the -ch- spelling. Here are some examples. Pronounce all of the -ch- spellings with a /k/ sound.

school - Greek σχολείο - skoleio
chorus - Greek Χορωδία - korodia
echo - Greek ηχώ - eko
chaos - χάος - kaos
mechanic - μηχανικός - mekanikos
orchestra - ορχήστρα - orkistra
stomach - στομάχι - stomaki

Speak this for practice:

When I went to school, I joined the chorus. Every day was the same in the big, echoing room where the orchestra and chorus met. All the band students would run to get their instruments while the orchestra director waited. Sometimes one of the clarinets would have a mechanical problem and the orchestra director had to fix it. It was a lot of chaos! But when we sang and played together, we worked hard and sounded great. At the end of the hour we were very hungry and our stomachs were empty, but our hearts were full.

12/24/2023

The consonant sounds in English can be confusing when words come from different languages.
In a few common words, -mb at the end of a word is pronounced /m/. Here are some examples: "dumb" (silent or stupid), "numb" (having no sensation or feeling, either physical or emotional), "lamb" (baby sheep, "climb" (go up using both hands and feet), "tomb" (dead person's gravesite, usually of stone), "plumb" (to work with a water or drainage system, to hang a straight weight down). The first four are Anglo Saxon; the last two come from Latin, so this pattern isn’t consistent.

If you add endings to these words, the /b/ remains silent.
Practice:
Dumb - /dum/
Dumber - /dummer/
Numb - /num/
Numbing medicine - /numming medicine/
BUT "number" as in 1,2,3 is /num-ber/
Numbed - /numbd/
Lamb - /lam/
Lambing season - /lamming season/
Climb - /clime/
Climber - /climer/
Tomb - /toom/
Tombstone - /toomstone/
Plumb - /plum/
Plumber - /plummer/

Speak this for practice:
The plumber climbed up to the high tomb and felt numb in the cold wind. The tombstone was cold. He took a string out of his pocket with a weight on it. He held the string out and dropped the weight, plumbing the depth. The tombstone was exactly 2 meters high.

There are not many of the "dumb numb" words that you see above. Most words with -mb pronounce the /b/ sound. Examples are "limber," "ember," "number," “slumber," "amber." All use the /b/ sound, but all are less common (except for the word "number") than the "dumb numb" words.

Practice recognizing and pronouncing the "dumb numb" words, and then the pronounced -mb words. This may help you with both spelling and sound.

12/02/2023

You may wonder why English spelling is so crazy.

Fundamentally, it's because of two factors. Let's discuss the first one today. First, we don't have enough letters in English to represent our sounds. The short sounds are easy: one letter surrounded by consonant sounds. But the long sounds are really hard.

We have multiple different ways to spell the "long" sound of the letter A. And each spelling denotes a different meaning.

As an example, let's use /r/ and /n/ sounds, and put them before and after the sound A. All three of the following words are pronounced the same way.
1) rain - the water that falls from the sky.
2) reign - the term of a king's rule, or how long he is king.
3) rein - the leather straps that go from a horse's mouth to your hands as you guide and control the horse.

I could also spell this sound "rane." The word does exist as a proper name, the name "Rane," from German, meaning "warrior."
But it is very uncommon.

As you can see, the spellings of the long vowels (the "letter sounds" of the vowels) bring us many different words that sound the same in English.

Perhaps this is why poetry and songs in English are so rich in rhymes. It's easy to rhyme words when you have such a large group of words that sound similar but mean many different things.

Practice by speaking these words -- they all have the long A sound in them.

mane - the fur on a lion's head and the long hair on top of a horse’s neck.
main - primary, most important
pane - a piece of glass in a window
pain - physical or mental suffering
peignoir - nightdress (this is French) - "pain-nwar"
trail - path
frame - a structure around a door, window, or picture
brain - the organ inside your head directing your thoughts and feelings.

That's all for now. Enjoy! And feel free to comment with questions.