Can you spell America’s most misspelled words? I saw this tweet via Google Trends recently, and it got me thinking that maybe America needs to ditch Candy Crush Saga in favor of Scrabble if we’re struggling with most of the words on this list. Are “special” and “beautiful” and “surprise” really that difficult?
Alabama: pneumonia
Alaska: schedule
Arizona: tomorrow
Arkansas: chihuahua
California: beautiful
Colorado: tomorrow
Connecticut: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Delaware: hallelujah
Washington: ninety
Florida: receipt
Georgia: gray
Hawaii: people
Idaho: quote
Illinois: pneumonia
Indiana: hallelujah
Iowa: vacuum
Kansas: diamond
Kentucky: beautiful
Louisiana: giraffe
Maine: pneumonia
Maryland: special
Massachusetts: license
Michigan: pneumonia
Minnesota: beautiful
Mississippi: nanny
Missouri: maintenance
Montana: surprise
Nebraska: suspicious
Nevada: available
New Hampshire: difficult
New Jersey: twelve
New Mexico: bananas
New York: beautiful
North Carolina: angel
North Dakota: dilemma
Ohio: beautiful
Oklahoma: patient
Oregon: sense
Pennsylvania: sauerkraut
Rhode Island: liar
South Carolina: chihuahua
South Dakota: college
Tennessee: chaos
Texas: maintenance
Utah: disease
Vermont: Europe
Virginia: delicious
Washington: pneumonia
West Virginia: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
Wisconsin: tomorrow
Wyoming: priority
Look at the list and tell me what you think. Admittedly, “pneumonia” confuses me a little, because I want to write the “u” first since that’s the sound my ear hears. But if I remember to think “knee-u-monia” as I spell it, that helps. I often find that with words I second-guess, getting it on paper is a quick way to see if I’ve got it right or wrong. My eye will quickly tell me if something is off because I have a sort of photographic memory and know how a word looks when it’s correctly spelled.
Do you have any tricks or tips to share that help you to spell out certain words? Are you surprised by the words on Google’s list that people find hard to spell?
I want to know who is using the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on a regular basis in Connecticut. It’s just a made up word on Mary Poppins, right?
Yep, totally made up. But it does have an exact spelling. LOL
I can tell you from using forums that the word most often spelled incorrectly is ‘ definitely’. It is always typed out on forums as ‘defiantly’, which drives me crazy! Also very common is mixing up ‘their’ and ‘there’.
Stop stalking me on facebook! LOL! Yes, I admit to misspelling quite a few words. One of the reasons I am using The Logic of Language and phonograms with my kids. I want them to be able to spell a word without spellcheck!
Oooh, now I have to go look that language program up!
We also have a list like this for Canada, and my province also struggles with ” supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” What the heck?! To be fair, I tried to spell it and failed.
Too bad you can’t be “practically perfect in every way,” right?
No, no I cannot. I am a terrible speller. Always have been. But my genius linguistics professor (who also sucked at spelling) always said that super smart people often cannot spell well.
Can anyone really spell supercalifragilistic? How is that word even on the list? I’m a little confused on why the beautiful people of California commonly misspell Beautiful. I myself misspell words all the time. I’m terrible at it. Thank goodness for spell check.
Another one they spell incorrectly is loose and lose.
This is one amazing list, I am sure I am guilty of misspelling one or two of these words.
Im not surprised by this at all lol!! I think spelling gets put on the back burner once people are older and it’s one of those “if you don’t use it” things. I actually often misspell surprise 😉 Thankful for spellcheck!
such a cool list. So interesting to see the spelling errors
How interesting!! I’m surprised by some of these!
This was definitely very educational. Thank you for the information 🙂