The difference is between growing up, learning a language by hearing and making the sounds, and learning it as a foreign language, having to understand and memorize the rules.
“They’re, their, there” all sound the same as well as “could’ve, could of”.
But interestingly other English speakers don’t make those mistakes as often as people emerging from the american education system.
It’s plausible that Americans are worse at this than foreigners, but English spelling is a crime and everyone who makes mistakes ought be excused on account of how ridiculous the “rules” are.
I know how to spell most of the words I use and I resent the fact that my memory is polluted with this otherwise useless knowledge.
In many other languages if you know how to say a word, you automatically know how to spell it. We need a world language with grammar as simple as English and spelling as straightforward as German.
I was going to say:
But interestingly other English speakers don’t make those mistakes as often as people emerging from the american education system.
It’s plausible that Americans are worse at this than foreigners, but English spelling is a crime and everyone who makes mistakes ought be excused on account of how ridiculous the “rules” are.
I know how to spell most of the words I use and I resent the fact that my memory is polluted with this otherwise useless knowledge.
In many other languages if you know how to say a word, you automatically know how to spell it. We need a world language with grammar as simple as English and spelling as straightforward as German.