Prove your spelling prowess in this KS3 quiz on words beginning at prov, provided by Education Quizzes!
"Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen." - Maimonides
One of the trickiest parts of spelling English is caused by the way that the language is pronounced. Unstressed vowels, whether a, e, i, o, or u, all sound the same, as schwa, written ǝ. Often it is possible to work out how to spell the unstressed vowel through knowledge of spelling rules or of a word's root. Sometimes, however, no clue exists. The word "liar" provides an example. It could be "lier" or "lior", since many words take those endings to indicate a person who does a particular action (in this case, lie). So you can have a "scaffolder", a "doctor", and a "liar". Apparently, the -ar suffix was once fashionable and some words which had previously ended in -er changed over time to end in -ar. Thus "scholar" was once "scoler". How is anyone supposed to spell correctly in these circumstances?