Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I'd better let an expert answer the first question.   I always assumed it has to do with the way letters are used to indicate how words are pronounced (not only in English but in other languages as well)—or, to put it another way, with how to guess at the proper pronunciation of a word based on its spelling—but that's probably an incomplete answer or maybe even wrong entirely.

But misspelling is easier.   I think there are two main reasons:

1) English does not use consistent spelling.   We've borrowed thousands of words, probably tens of thousands, from foreign languages and the rules of pronunciation for each language are different.   Whenever the language we borrowed from uses the Roman alphabet, we usually keep the original spelling (thus "chauffeur", "dumbkopf", "javalina", "spaghetti" and "Saturnalia"); where our benefactor uses a different script, we transcribe the spelling according to different systems at different times (thus "Hawai'i", "Isaac", "wadi", "McDonald", "amok", "djinn", "arigato", "hsieh-hsieh", "hippopotamus" and many more).   Furthermore we've kept old English spellings even after their pronunciations have changed: "Worcestershire", "women", "neighbor" and "bomb" are examples.   Russian is not a phonetically spelled language even though most of its people will tell you it is; but Anglophiles don't even pretend about it.   We just sigh and learn it as best we can.

2) On top of that, some people just don't have an eye for spelling.   I'm fortunate in that respect:   With most words, once I've looked at it I know how to spell it, and thus spelling tests in elementary school were for me mostly just penmanship exercises.   But my father-in-law of sainted memory (how I miss that man sometimes!), who was very smart in his own right, had all the natural spelling talent of a baboon; my wife inherited his, and my oldest son too.   My oldest daughter is more like me in that respect, but Ricky had to work at it.   He's much better now, but it took real effort, and I'm proud of how well he's improved.

There are lots of hints I can give someone about why such-and-such a word is spelled with a 'ph' instead of an 'f', and so forth, but I suspect that to understand and remember them would require the sort of intellect that wouldn't need help with spelling in the first place.   I mean, if I said "it's a Greek word, so the plural isn't 'octopi' but 'octopoda', because in Greek they did it in such-and-such a way so...", it seems likely to me that only one who's interested in such details would remember them, and that kind of person would already know how things are spelled.   Just a theory.