Psychologist Greg Simpson was studying Korean with the help of a graduate student, a Korean native, when a thought struck him. “You don’t have spelling bees, do you?” he asked her. He had to explain ...

English, whatever its merits as a language, is a bitch to spell. There are so many rules, and so many exceptions, and yet in the end you have to learn a lot of words on a case-by-case basis. If future ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The Church publishes the Monitor ...

Johnny in Topeka can’t read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less ...

Kate Burridge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond ...

Humans couldn't be satisfied with spelling out only things they say. They also needed to spell out the sounds around them. Giving a name to a sound is called "onomatopoeia." The word is difficult to ...

To the surprize of absolootely no one, we have evolved into a nashun of pore spellers. And maybe the teachers, the students and computer spell-checkers aren’t entirely to blame. Because when Niall ...

It's important to note that the spelling of a word is not always an accurate guide to how it is pronounced. Similarly the pronounciation of a word is not always helpful when working out how that word ...

I remember walking down a busy street in Delhi during my first stay in India and noting the different ways in which the same words were written in Latin script. Lakshmi here, Luxmi there. Since then I ...