The worst irregularities of English spelling

Although 80 of the 91 basic English spelling patterns have exceptions, 63 affect between them only 905 of the total of 3695 common words with unpredictable spellings. (The Overview page at www.englishspellingproblems.co.uk gives the individual figures for all exceptions to English spelling patterns.) Thirty one patterns have fewer than 10 exceptions (e.g. oil/oyster, zip /xylophone). They can all await improvement until much bigger difficulties have been reduced first.


Of the remaining 17 spelling patterns with more than 50 exceptions each, five necessitate substantial memorisation of spellings, but cause only minimal reading difficulties:
her / turn, third, search– in 206 words;
fasten / abandon, truncheon, certain- 205;
father / author, armour, nectar -136;
ordinary / machinery, inventory - 96 ;
fish / photo, stuff – 56.
They can remain unimproved for a little longer too.

This leaves just the following 'dirty dozen' which greatly handicap progress in both learning to read and write:

Irregular consonant doubling (yellow melon)  affects 914 words
Eel - eat, even, ceiling, field, police  -  452

food - rude, shrewd, move, group  - 189
mole - bowl,  roll,  soul,  boast  -  179
sauce - caught,  bought,  always - 130
toe - go, dough,  sew,  cocoa  -  104

plate - wait, weight, straight  - 87
bite  -  might,  style,  mild   - 79

up  -  front, some, couple, blood  - 69
end - head, any, said, Wednesday - 63
ink - mystery, pretty, women, sieve   - 53

air - care, bear, aerial, their, there - 58

Between them, the above 12 inconsistencies cause difficulties in 2334 of the total of 3695 common English words with some kind of spelling irregularity. Reducing them all would undoubtedly make initial English literacy acquisition much easier and faster. This would, however, probably seem like too much change in one go for most people.

Consonant doubling uncertainly and unpredictable spellings for the ee-sound create the longest rote-learning lists, with 914 and 452 words respectively. Improving just their regularity would already halve the spelling memorisation burden. I will therefore list all the words affected by them first of all.

Many people are reluctant to take a close look at facts and figures, but it is impossible to decide on the best and most feasible improvements to English spelling without it. I will therefore list all the words affected by the 12 main English spelling irregularities and discuss the spelling and reading problems which they cause.