Sankey diagrams are good for this. Here's one for 'camouflage'. https://i.imgur.com/J5IIqCF.png

Interesting. I've never seen this kind of visualization used for dictionary hierarchies like this.

> Double letters are hard to remember and frequently don’t add anything phonetically to a word.

In germanic languages, they actually do. Schwarzeneger (single g) would be pronounced Schwarzen-_e_-ger, with a long and pronounced e.

Yep. They are an important indicator of how to pronounce a word. I thought the same thing was true in English, but now I’m not sure..

Generally the "rule" in English is the same as the one in German: a double consonant ensure the preceding vowel is pronounced the short way rather than the long way.

The saddest sadist, the matter of maters, and the bitter biter, for example.

That’s not long or short, but different vowels entirely. A better spelling system would express the diphthongs explicitly, or at least as diacritics.

There are soo many different English accents both within the UK and around the world that consistent pronunciation isn’t guaranteed.

Tomato, Aluminium, Chips, Craig to name a few off the top of my head.

How is Chips pronounced differently?

I've heard that it's common to use the phrase "fish and chips" to distinguish between Australians and New Zealanders.

Had no idea, but I found an example now, thank you!

For anyone else who wants to hear this difference:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XKuPfZpzEHg

It almost appears as if they were referring to the American alternatives, Aluminum and fries.

I'd have thought the accents argument would apply to any location, Germany included.

German dialects are rarely written and if they are they are written different from Standard German. The written German language is very phonetic and if you know the rules you know exactly how a word is supposed to be pronounced.

See also this list of all the misspellings of Britney Spears' name from three months of Google searches: http://archive.google.com/jobs/britney.html

Not sure exactly how old this is -- the copyright date at the bottom says 2011, but the Wayback Machine has copies dating back to at least 2002.

Oddly, after all their research, they get the meaning of his name wrong.

It’s actually Black Ploughman (or Plowman if you prefer) [0]

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zYCCR0kVvs

[author of the article] Great find! Had not seen this clip. We were just using our dear friend Wikipedia for the etymology :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzenegger_(surname)

Whenever I need to spell Arnold Schwarzenegger, I just look at my UC bachelor of science diploma on the wall. It’s very convenient.

Was he there at the convocation?

No, but OP is Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Assuming UC is University of California, he's probably on there as the governor.

> What is the name of the Austrian bodybuilder who has been Mr. Universe three times and Mr. Olympia seven times?

Also the second most famous Austrian-born politician.

Second? Whom do you refer to as most famous one? I guess the one that was born in 1889?

See also the interactive Gyllenhaal Experiment where you can try spelling different last names and see how you compare to others: https://pudding.cool/2019/02/gyllenhaal/

I thought the misspelling that contains a racial slur would show up highly, given that it's only one letter off, and the 'a' variant does rank high; but perhaps some subconscious "mental filtering" in the participants avoided that.

Ironically (and unfortunately), the first half of Schwarzenegger's name is also a Yiddish slur that means exactly the same thing.

In German, it (schwarz) simply means 'black', with pretty much the same negative connotation it has in English when taking about persons.

Yes, I know. The Yiddish is almost identical to the German, but has a significantly more negative connotation.

(Edit: for an inverse example, consider "dreck": in Yiddish it just means "garbage," but my understanding is that it's significantly more offensive in most Germanic languages.)

Yes, the German word in a neutral meaning means "dirt", and you can easily see how that would be offensive when used for a person.

It's mostly used for stuff that makes you angry. https://www.dreckstool.de/hitlist is a prime example.

(And you can see the effect of the home office, Microsoft Teams is new there.)

I disagree. Your meanings may be reasonable for Yinglish (Yiddish-derived English), but in Yiddish both the words shvartser and neger are neutral nouns. In addition drek is quite negative, meaning filth or shit.

This actually gives that term used as the spoof-equivalent of "The Force" from the movie Spaceballs a surprising double meaning. Had no idea.

It's The Schwartz, with a T. I don't know if it has a meaning or if it means the same thing as Schwarz.

https://spaceballs.fandom.com/wiki/The_Schwartz

I'm not sure having what someone pointed out is a double entendre with a Yiddish slur is a selling point here...

Enjoyed this article thoroughly. My last name is a common object and only four letters, and so you would think easy to spell. However it gets butchered quite often--perhaps because people want it differentiated from the common noun.

Is it also a word that is an occasional answer to a trivia question? If so... I can let you know what our stats say :)

Thanks that would be interesting. Though I doubt it would be even an occasional triva answer-I'm no Schwarzenegger!

Fun fact, in Malay or Indonesian language "Schwarzenegger" word pronunciation sounds very similar to "susah nak eja" or literally means "hard to spell" in English

“255 Ways to Spell Schwarzenegger”

The geek in me immediately thinks there’s probably more ways of spelling his name, it’s just that you’re using an 8 bit integer for the counter...

"0 Ways to Spell Schwarzenegger"

My favourites from the full list

Schwartzeiojaweofjaweneger

Schwartzenkangaroo

Schwarzatwizzler

Meh. I have a six-letter surname, very common in northern Europe, and a couple of high school teachers basically never got the first vowel correct.

Very funny and interesting thanks for posting this.

Thanks! We have so many more to investigate... I'm thinking "cirque du soleil" is my next one. I see at least 48 different spellings on it at first glance...

There was a post office in New Mexico that had collected over 100 misspellings of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pojoaque,_New_Mexico

I’d be interested in the state most misspelled (maybe California or Pennsylvania) and the one least (probably Ohio or Iowa).

Not about spelling but we had someone investigate what state is guessed when a different state is the answer... here's the gif showing that data: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/connorwaldoch_python-matplotl...

Massachusetts and Connecticut have got to be up there.

I would've thought Arkansas would've been at the top of that list.

I'd be shocked if Mississippi is not the most misspelled US state name.

Why California?

There's a machine at my work named Schwarzenegger, which is just great.