23% of People Never Master Spelling, Have You? Take This Tricky Words Test and Prove It!

Answer. Wednesday. Jeopardy. Huh? 

Have you ever noticed how many words contain unexpected and completely unnecessary letters? The English language is riddled with inconsistencies and aberrations—which makes figuring out spelling and pronunciation a real pain. Not everyone around the world has it so hard, either. In most languages, you can reliably predict how to pronounce a word based on how its spelled. And in certain (enviable) languages such as Spanish and Italian, you can also predict spelling from pronunciation. 

Unfortunately for us, you can't predict either spelling or pronunciation in the English language. This is because English has many different ways of representing the same sound (consider: cancer, chasm, kazoo, queue) AND a bunch of letter combinations that can represent more than one sound (consider: out, soul, soup).

How Did English Get so Needlessly Complex?

English wasn't always so frustratingly irregular. Up until the Middle Ages, it was actually fairly straightforward. But over time, the language has grown more complex, partially due to the introduction of foreign words—some of which remain intact (such as hors d'oeuvres) while others have been mangled through time into bizarre spellings (such as jeopardy, which came from the French jeu parti, meaning "divided game"). Part of the blame also belongs to certain strange twists of history, such as the fact that the first English printing press was operated by Belgians who misspelled a good number of words (e.g. busy instead of bisy) and randomly added letters to others to beef up their count (e.g. frend became friend). 

Pity the American schoolchild. While the majority of kids in the U.S. do eventually conquer basic spelling, it takes up to three years longer than it does for their foreign counterparts. What's worse is that almost 25% of students never master spelling at all.

Does Spelling Really Matter Though?

It's true that in this day and age, technology like Grammarly makes it easier for poor spellers to get by. But spell check tools aren't foolproof, and they're not always available either. Plus, even if the likelihood of an error has diminished, the impact has not: spelling mistakes make us look sloppy and, let's face it, dumb. A lack of spelling proficiency impacts how others perceive us, which can have negative consequences both personally and professionally.

This Quiz Will Help You Master Some of the Most Commonly Misspelled Words!

Are you the Queen of the Bee? Try this spelling quiz and prove it! Or does just hearing the word "spelling" make you break out in hives? In that case, all the more reason to get these slippery spelling suckers down once and for all! Then go on to explore all of our spelling and language quizzes!