Learn English – the English term for “unwittingly misspelling words based on their pronunciation?”

linguisticsphrase-requestssingle-word-requests

Note that this is not the same as What is it called when words are deliberately spelled incorrectly but pronunciation is kept unchanged? because that question is about deliberate misspellings, whereas this one is about unwitting misspellings.

Many people unknowingly spell an English word exactly as they would pronounce it, which can lead to a misspelling.

Examples:

1.Elifant or Elifent for elephant.

"She ran away on seeing the elifant."

2.Shiwawa for Chihuahua.

"Their dog is a Shiwawa."

This is related to not knowing the correct spelling of the word, and is a common type of mistake made even by native speakers of English, though probably not with 'elephant'; for instance I remember a native speaker cuttingly reject some good advice from a moderator at a car audio forum with the sentence:

You need not lekcher me about the rules of this forum. I am no neofite here.

Sample sentence for SWR:

Writing 'elifent' for 'elephant' unwittingly, based on its pronunciation would be an example of ______________.

The correct term is not transliteration, and google search did not prominently turn up a pointer to such a word:

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=misspelling+words+according+to+pronunciation

So what is the English word for "misspelling words based on their pronunciation?"

A very good option already suggested kindly by @Lawrence is "phonetic spelling" (or phonetic misspelling) but can someone find a single word to express the same meaning?

Best Answer

Consider phonetic spelling.

Phonetic spelling constitutes an alteration of ordinary spelling that better represents the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and that is used in a context of conventional spelling. - dictionary.com

The above article calls IPA an example of phonetic orthography, with the label phonetic spelling retained for the case where the ordinary alphabet is used. The following quote is consistent with this usage:

  • Start with words you already know. This will allow you come up with your own phonetic spellings. "Dog - Dahg" would be a very simple entry. Notice how "ah" makes the long "a" sound. Another example of a phonetic spelling would be "facade - fuh-sahd." - Phonetics Spelling Dictionary

Here's an article that uses the term phonetic misspelling in the sense you're looking for, courtesy of ... :) yourself:

Let's Teach Spelling - Not Phonetic Misspelling - Robert L Hillerich

The inverse (forming sounds from letters) is called phonics:

The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or, in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading. - wikipedia

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