Take a look at the following English words: butcher, squirrel, mortgage, and choir. Does something seem off about them? At one point in time, the words move and love rhymed. So did blood, good, and ...

If you're a kid learning how to write, or an adult speaker of a language with sensible spelling, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank. And even if you're a completely literate adult native ...

Many people were spellbound as they watched the newest Scripps National Spelling Bee champions — Gokul Venkatachalam and Vanya Shivashankar — correctly sound out scherenschnitte and nunatak in order ...

Misty Adoniou is a Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Canberra. She is the author of the Cambridge University Press book 'Spelling ...

My 11-year-old student sighs. How can the same letters make so many different sounds? We are looking at the letter combination “ough”, which can be read in seven different ways: “through”, “thorough”, ...

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 ...