Why does everyone spell definitely wrong

Search for:. Home » QA. Add a comment Cancel reply. You may also like. What Did Zeus Do Wrong? Question: Who Is Flower Queen? Which, granted, I don't use all that often, but imagine how little someone who doesn't even have it as a middle name runs into it. Also, lots of names are spelled fairly close to how they sound; but Mykul doesn't look anything like Michael. My first name also has some weird vowel combos, but it at least looks like it sounds. Stupid middle name. Checking google, which is a bad completely meaningless but easy method, there are million hits for "ea", as against million for "ae".

Searching for "ae" does not search for "ae" within other words, which is what we are talking about. It searches for it as a word on its own. When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking. LobsterMitten wrote: "Weird" is often misspelled, for example. I have nothing to add. I just wanted to say hello. Yeah, that's not really a useful metric anyhow—the co-occurance of ea vs. A common misspelling, but again admitting ghits as a questionable metric very much a minority of cases.

Ok, I'm shamed re the Google thing. But cortex, the frequency of Michael misspellings doesn't get to the question of "why", which was what I was trying - misguidedly - to shed light on, with stats about the frequency of the vowel combinations in the language as a whole, not just the name Michael.

Ditto on the English-vowels-fucking-things-up-comment. My name is Mukund, and people rarely reach the 'k'. Oh geez. Just saw subsequent part of your post; now turning off computer and going to sit outside for a while to refresh brain.

My name is Michael and I didn't realize people often misspelled it. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I think it means that I am spectacularly clueless. In my defense, people usually call me Mike unless they are my mother.

Maybe you're the problem? Well, it's a hebrew word, and there's a glottal stop between the vowels in Hebrew: mi-kha-el. But when it gets rendered in a language without markers for glottal stops, those separate vocables start to look like a dipthong. And as noted above since Indo-European languages don't do "ae", "ea" fits the bill. I knew a Micheal. You can pretty much guess how he turned out. My name is Michael.

I've experienced it. My friend Michael's mother often misspelled his name, which still makes me laugh. Just another vote for "doesn't look anything like it sounds. Agree with the everybody-spells-everything-wrong theory.

The fact that people still type "definately" on this site even after it has been called out in its own post bemuses me to no end. Geez, I swear it was the topic of a post here. Hell if I can find it now. One of my in-laws is named Micheal, with the e first, and people spell his name wrong all the time, too. Michael is my middle name, and I frequently misspelled it for a long time until I took the time to figure out what it means, which is "who resembles god," where the El part is the word for god.

Keeping that in mind has helped me from ever misspelling it again. I'm not sure that it's worth giving people the whole story, but it may be. By the way, misspelling my last name is almost a sport for most businesses, so I can definitely sympathize. First response is correct; it's a frequency thing. The same thing happens with Isreal Israel.

As a Keith, I feel your pain I mean, what the fuck is up with "Kieth? On the other hand, your name could be spelled Michael, but pronounced Throatwobbler Mangrove.

How about his and to riff off what iguanapolitico said : I know I'm likely to spell "definitely," wrong. W hy is there no "E" grade in the North American? H ow do you spell terrifying? H ow do you spell stupid? W hy do some people over here who profess a lot on "grammar",start some of their answers with a "because"? Ask away and we will do our best to answer or find someone who can.

We try to vet our answers to get you the most acurate answers. You little tinker you. I generally attribute this kind of thing which I see often too—including many instances of this particular aberration right here on fluther to ignorance and poor attitude, which in my mind are very closely linked. Many people seem to look only at the beginning of a word and then wing it from there, leaning heavily on context to support meaning.

They expect the reader to do most of the work instead of sharing the burden of communication. I do wonder what those folks see or think they see when they read. Do they suppose the Tony Curtis-Sidney Poitier movie is about two people who are really definite about things? How anyone could confuse the two is beyond me. I agree with Jeruba that carelessness and laziness are commonly observed in native speakers of English who fail to discriminate between words that are structurally similar.

These people frequently mispronounce words they use and often use words that do not really mean what they are trying to say. People who read regularly and use a good dictionary where they encounter words whose meaning is unclear to them rarely make such errors. Even if you really hated to read where you were younger, it is so important to your continued growth as a person that you read regularly.

The subject is not nearly as important as the quality of the material. By being a frequent reader you will become more and more and like those who know about many things and can express themselves with confidence. Instead, we rely on context clues.

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