Not that only we commit language errors, people from the land of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton also commit follies, despite English being their mother tongue. I wondered after reading a report how people from English speaking countries also misspell words, those which are not difficult ones.
But I have seen people around who justify their language and grammar either calling it as ‘American English’ or ‘Yo yo English’, which is still beyond my comprehension. Pub-going youth not only misspell words and use them, but in fact kill them in their own way. They have their own way to justify to do so, they call it modern and people who fail to understand them are termed as ‘old fashioned’ or dubbed as merely ‘outdated’.
I wish someone conducts a survery even here to check how many people are killing the language and in what manner!
A new study has shown that a majority of Brits find it difficult to properly spell the word ‘definitely’.
The 10-letter word of English language topped the list of commonly misspelt words as most of them mix up the second ‘I’ with an ‘A’.
The second place went to ‘sacrilegious’, where people often get confused over whether it has an ‘E’ or ‘I’ in the middle.
Indict, which is often misspelt as ‘indite’, came third followed by ‘manoeuvre’ at the fourth place.
Britons often face problems due to the proximity of the ‘O’ and ‘E’ to each other.
‘Bureaucracy’ was fifth, which is awkward because the inclusion of so many vowels.
‘Broccoli’, ‘phlegm’, ‘prejudice’, ‘consensus’ and ‘unnecessary’ wrapped up the top ten.
The survey led by www.OnePoll.com showed that nearly one in 10 thought ‘mortgage’ was spelt ‘morgauge’ and seven per cent often spell ‘speech’ as ‘speach’.
Moreover, 90 per cent couldn’t spell ‘diarrhoea’.
“So many of us can’t seem to spell,” a spokesperson for market research company said.
“Whether it is down to the structure of the word, or the frequency of use, there is no excuse not to learn how they are formed. And considering people judge others, yet don’t like their intelligence to be judged by how well they spell, they should up their game and pick up a dictionary,” the spokesperson added.
Top 10 misspelt words are:
1. Definitely
2. Sacrilegious
3. Indict
4. Manoeuvre
5. Bureaucracy
6. Broccoli
7. Phlegm
8. Prejudice
9. Consensus
10. Unnecessary
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