Spelling words in English can be somewhat challenging at times. Even many native English speakers have problems correctly spelling certain words. The main reason for this is that many English words are not spelt the way they are spoken and this can cause a lot of confusion, especially for anyone learning English. Let's start with a good example of irregular spelling in English - words containing "ough":

Bought - this is pronounced "bawt"

Brought - "brawt"

Tough - "tuff"

Through - "throo"

Dough - "doe"

Maddening, isn't it? Let's look at some other common problems when spelling in English, such as homophones - words that sound the same as each other. English is full of homophonic words:

Two, too and to (all pronounced like "too")

Through, threw (both pronounced "throo")

New, knew ("niew")

Not, naught, knot ("not")

There are also what we call many "swallowed syllables" in English - parts of the word that are not pronounced:

Different - "diffrent"

Every - "evry"

Aspirin - "asprin"

Temperature - "temprature"

Vegetable - "vegtable"

Comfortable - "comftable"

To make things even more confusing there are several words where letters remain silent when pronouncing them:

B - dumb, thumb, plumbing

D- sandwich, Wednesday

G - sign, align, foreign

GH - daughter, night, light, right

H - why, honest, hour, honour

K - know, knee, knight, knob

L - should, walk, talk, half

P - cupboard, psychology, psychiatrist

S - aisle, island

T - whistle, glisten, listen, hasten, fasten

U - guess, guilty, guitar

W - who, write, wreck, wrong

Lastly, we shall look at unusual letter combinations that affect the way a word is pronounced:

GH ('F')as in - cough, trough, enough, rough, laugh

CH ('K') - character, chemistry, Christmas, stomach, ache

EA ('EH')- breakfast, head, bread, lead, instead

EA ('EI') - break, steak

EA ('EE')- beak, weak, streak

OU ('UH')- country, double, enough, tough

Spelling in English is, unarguably, tricky. If in doubt (pronounced "dowt"), check your dictionary or, even better, use an online dictionary that enables you to also listen to the pronunciation of different words. Remember - practice makes perfect!

KJ Hutchings is the owner of KJ Language Services, providing proofreading, editing and writing services to businesses and students, in particular those who use English as a second language. For more information about how you can make your English documents the very best they can be, visit her site at: http://www.kjlanguageservices.com/