Razor TV hit the streets with 15 commonly misspelled words to find out if Singaporeans can spell.
Are Singaporeans bad spellers?
In 1992, the then Vice President of America Dan Quayle corrected a sixth-grader's spelling of the word potato, as 'potatoe'. Less than five months later, he was voted out of office, along with the then President George H W Bush. Was it a coincidence? Maybe not. Bad spelling might just hurt your career, as it did for Dan Quayle. In this technology driven age, we tend to google, spell check or search online dictionaries for the correct spelling. Has this reduced our ability to spell correctly? RazorTV hit the streets, armed with a list of 15 commonly misspelled words, to find out if Singaporeans can spell. And the results were surprising. Find out the results of our test by watching the video and have a go at the 15 words to see if you can spell it yourself! Is it accomdation, accomodation or accommodation? How about fluorescent (or perhaps flourescent)?*
These are two of the words that nobody interviewed by Razor TV got right. Dr Ng Bee Chin, Acting head of the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), told Razor TV that part of the problem lies with the irregular way English words are spelt. "The problem is that, for many English words, the way it's spoken is not the way it's spelt. English, as a language, has (an) irregular spelling system. "And you compare English to Malay - in Malay, what you hear is what you spell," she said. What are some of the words you always thought you knew how to spell? Razor TV also took a look at some everyday words that people can't seem to spell. Click here to find out which they are.
But there is one word that all the interviewees had no problems spelling - "successful"! Some other words many interviewees spelt correctly were "humorous", "truly", "possession" and "threshold". Singaporeans can spell!
Perhaps Singaporeans are not so bad at spelling - after all some of the words in our spelling test are quite tricky.
And our reliance on our gadgets can help us improve our spelling: If we take the effort to think through the words we are using, and learn from our spell checks, online dictionaries and Google searches.
*The words are spelt 'accommodation' and 'fluorescent'
Razor TV hit the streets with 15 commonly misspelled words to find out if Singaporeans can spell.
Are Singaporeans bad spellers?
In 1992, the then Vice President of America Dan Quayle corrected a sixth-grader's spelling of the word potato, as 'potatoe'. Less than five months later, he was voted out of office, along with the then President George H W Bush. Was it a coincidence? Maybe not. Bad spelling might just hurt your career, as it did for Dan Quayle. In this technology driven age, we tend to google, spell check or search online dictionaries for the correct spelling. Has this reduced our ability to spell correctly? RazorTV hit the streets, armed with a list of 15 commonly misspelled words, to find out if Singaporeans can spell. And the results were surprising. Find out the results of our test by watching the video and have a go at the 15 words to see if you can spell it yourself! Is it accomdation, accomodation or accommodation? How about fluorescent (or perhaps flourescent)?*
These are two of the words that nobody interviewed by Razor TV got right. Dr Ng Bee Chin, Acting head of the Division of Linguistics and Multilingual Studies at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), told Razor TV that part of the problem lies with the irregular way English words are spelt. "The problem is that, for many English words, the way it's spoken is not the way it's spelt. English, as a language, has (an) irregular spelling system. "And you compare English to Malay - in Malay, what you hear is what you spell," she said. What are some of the words you always thought you knew how to spell? Razor TV also took a look at some everyday words that people can't seem to spell. Click here to find out which they are.
But there is one word that all the interviewees had no problems spelling - "successful"! Some other words many interviewees spelt correctly were "humorous", "truly", "possession" and "threshold". Singaporeans can spell!
Perhaps Singaporeans are not so bad at spelling - after all some of the words in our spelling test are quite tricky.
And our reliance on our gadgets can help us improve our spelling: If we take the effort to think through the words we are using, and learn from our spell checks, online dictionaries and Google searches.
*The words are spelt 'accommodation' and 'fluorescent'
