I think we all appreciate that good spelling matters, whether or not any given case of
incorrect spelling is actually enough to preclude one’s understanding of some written
material. Anyway, being a professional translator – a professional linguist – I found this fact
leading me to write a blog entirely about incorrect spelling as a subject. That said, it’s
important to point out that it involved me aiming to do more than just provide a list of
commonly misspelled words with corrections (anyone can do that and claim it makes them an
“expert” on spelling who knows better than a lot of other people); I was determined to, for
example, bring up theories as to how misspellings come about.

“So where would I begin doing something like that?”, you may be asking. I will start by
mentioning this: generally speaking, I divide spelling mistakes into two categories. The first
is homophone ones e.g. “I should of” when it should be “I should have”. We all know that
“of” is definitely a real word as well, just like “have”, but I know I’m not the first to imply
that “should of” is born of “should have” having been shortened to “should’ve” in speech.
The other category is non-homophone ones e.g. I once had a client tell me in an email that
she was very “greatful” for my work for her when the proper spelling of that word is
“grateful”. “Greatful”, unlike “of”, doesn’t exist in correct English, even if there are plenty of
people who, on account of their education (or rather lack thereof) would just overlook that
upon reading “greatful”, but if you were being fair to them you would accept that you could
“sort of” understand that even if you made no secret of yourself thinking that they were thick.
Of course, “great” is certainly an actual word in English, and is in fact usually used as an
adjective, just like “grateful” itself; whereas “grate” is (always) a noun. And when you bear
in mind that “great” is normally used to refer to something that is regarded as highly positive
and/or liked, I guess that is the reason behind that spelling mistake, if there ever was one.
Anyway, when I was learning French and German I was expected to get my spelling right
whenever I wrote in those languages, which is only to be expected. But it just seems to me
that, when you unknowingly make spelling mistakes in any language, these misspelled words
generally at least actually look passable as words in the language more often than not, like
“greatful” above.
Now, this poem is clearly deliberately misspelled as much as possible:
https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/gust-becos-i-cud-not-spel/ Some of the misspellings are
actual words (homophone type spelling mistakes, like I said) while some of them simply
aren’t words at all – some of them simply don’t even look English at all (unlike “greatful”
above). “Becos”? “Spel”? How could you write things like those without having a sense that
they were spelled incorrectly, which they certainly are? By the way, something like
“spellign,” when it should be “spelling”, which merely has the last two letters the wrong way
round, is what I call a typo, and I regard that differently for the purpose of this article. But
why write a poem like this (if not for just dumb amusement the likes of which, I understand,
will soon bore or annoy some people)? Is it in fact capable of, in any way at all, indirectly
shedding light on causes of spelling mistakes from a linguistic standpoint?
In the same way: maybe, just maybe, the exercise that follows could also be capable of
indirectly shedding light on causes of spelling mistakes in French and German from a
linguistic standpoint. Yes, I decided to write French and German translations of this poem
which followed the same rule (even if they don’t actually rhyme themselves), while asking
myself: can I really do this without including too many words which are actual words used

wrongly? And I made a point of avoiding writing words like “becos” and “spel” as described
above. After I had finished writing them I marked homophone actual words in the foreign
languages, used incorrectly, in one colour and “words” which don’t even exist in the foreign
languages in another, and compared the results afterwards.
FRENCH VERSION
Juste par se queue je ne pouvai par épelé
Ceut-la n’été orcune réflexion queue j’était stupide
Quant les gare à l'école en lu mon aicriture
Quelqu’uns d’eut en ris
Mai main tenant je suit le dictatteur
Ils doivent aicrire comme mois
Où ils ne réussiront par
Leurre GCSE
Quelqu’unes des philles en étais OK
Mai selles qui en ris beaucou
En était toutes a rond dites
Est en était récemont tués
Le proffeseur qui a corrigait mon aicriture
N’a par du toux était abbatu
Mai pendant les quinze heures derniaires
Et débout contre un mur
Il doigt y rester jusqu’a se qu’il puice aicrire
Figgymisgrugifooniyn correcte amont
Je ponce qu’il restera là pour l’aiternitais
Je lait inventais sceaulement aujour dui
Bizarre as it may sound, I’m proud at having invented a few “words” that never existed in
proper French, like “aicrire”, “beaucou” and “sceaulement”, but far more often than not I just
saw no option other than to replace a word with another actual French word that sounds just
like it (“gare” rather than “gars”, “toux” rather than “tout” etc.). Even if I do say so myself, I
thought “lait” in place of “l’ai” was good. However, for “ce que” in the first line, I had
originally thought of writing “skeu” as a word which, in isolation, I found would likely not
convince anyone that it would be meant to resemble French speech if pronounced according
to French pronunciation; it just didn’t belong there, and so I changed it to “se que”. If nothing
else, this certainly illustrates how the final syllable in verb endings in French so often has the
same vowel sound [eɪ], in many tenses.
GERMAN VERSION
Nuhr wail ich nischt rischtig schraiben konnte
Dass hiess nischt das ich dorf wahr
Als die Jungs in der Schuhle meiner Schrifft gelehsen harben,
Harben einiger von iehnen gelacht
Arber jetzt binn ich der Diktartor
Sie müssen wie mich schraiben

Ander Waise können Sie Ihr
GCSE nicht bestähen
Einiger der Mädchen wahren OK
Arber die die viehl gelacht harben
Sind alle auf gerundet worden
Und sind vor Kurzem erschossen worden
Der Lährer der meiner Reschtschraibung korigiert hat
Ist gar nischt erschossen worden
Arber hat seit dehn letzten fünfzähn Stunden
An eine Wand gestanden
Er muss dar standen biss er
Figgymisgrugifooniyn rischtig schraiben kann
Ich dänke er wird auf äwig da standen
Ich harbe es nuhr heuter inventiert
This is interesting – looking at the output of my German version of this poem, it’s the
opposite: I invented words which don’t exist in German a lot more than I replaced words with
other words that are actual German words and which sound like them! Should we put this
down to English and German belonging to the same branch of languages whereas French is a
Romance language? By the way, in the penultimate line I originally replaced “denke” with
“Denker,” but as “Denker” is a noun and anyone who has studied German at a half-decent
level knows that all nouns in German begin with a capital letter (including non-proper
nouns), that’s why I changed it to “dänke” eventually.
“Punchline” bit: this is an old fun conundrum that I invented. Imagine a sign outside a shop
that says, “No dogs allowed, guide dogs…” – do you finish this “accepted” or “excepted”?
Normally I would point out that “accepted” is correct, but in a way “excepted” can be correct
too in the way that guide dogs are excepted from the implied ban.