spelling quirks

While living in Iowa City during the mid-1990’s, I had a job for awhile at NCS, grading essay tests taken by little kids. One word that no kid could ever spell correctly, no matter how well they wrote, was “helmet”. (Which they often referred to in the very frequent essays involving bicycles.) They virtually always wrote “helment.”

Now grading tests tonight on Kant’s Prolegomena, and I am reminded of a word that my Egyptian students virtually always misspell, no matter how perfect their English– “angel”. It’s almost always spelled as “angle”. I can’t think of any reason pertaining to the Arabic language for that to be the case, so it’s just one of those minor sociological puzzles that come up from time to time.