The Complete Guide to English Spelling Rules (32 page)

An unusual but very ancient pair of words use the
om
spelling to achieve the
oo
sound—
tomb
and
womb
.

There is a very large group of words that use the
eu
spelling. Most of these are scientific words, but there are quite a number of words in general use:

A very small group of words uses
ui
to achieve the
oo
sound:.

The
ua
group of words can be eliminated because
ua
is not a true diphthong; i.e., it is pronounced not as one syllable, but two. There are many words that contain this vowel combination, but in most cases the
al
is a suffix and when pronounced correctly, does not produce the
oo
sound.

A note on pronunciation. There will always be differences of opinion regarding the correct pronunciation of the
oo
sound. With some words, it is clearly an
oo
sound, whereas with others the sound is closer to
uh
. Compare
wound
and
would
. This is a matter of personal preference and does not affect the spelling.

In review, we can see that the eighteen possible combinations can be reduced to a mere half dozen important spellings that group themselves into logical patterns.

C
HAPTER 31

Using
al, tial, cial, sial

M
any nouns can be made into adjectives by the addition of the suffix
al
:

Sometimes it is necessary to preserve or create a soft
s
sound before the
al
, so an
i
is inserted, resulting in either
cial
or
tial
. There are about seventy commonly used words that employ one of these endings. Because they sound more or less, the same, the problem is which one to use.

Historical footnote:

In the overly quaint Ye Olde Tea Shoppe, the word
ye
was originally pronounced
the
. The
y
takes the place of an ancient letter called a thorn, now no longer used, that had the
th
sound. The word
yclept,
much loved by history buffs, is more properly
clept
, as the prefix
y
indicates the past participle only.

Spelling rule #1: The vast majority of words in this group will end in
tial
. This includes all words coming from a root that ends in
t
:

Spelling rule #2: Words that come from a root that ends in a soft
c
or an
x
will use the
cial
ending:

Spelling rule #3: A major exception is any word that comes from a root that ends in
ence
or
ance
. These will use
tial
:

Anomalies include
equinoctial, palatial
, and
axial
.

Note that only two commonly used English words use the highly logical
sial
ending:
ambrosial
and
controversial
.

Note also that some dictionaries offer a choice between
spacial
and
spatial
. Obviously, the correct spelling should be
spacial
. Similarly, the adjective
palatial
makes absolutely no sense, but the logical
palacial
has not yet appeared in our dictionaries.

C
HAPTER 32

Using
efy
and
ify

T
he endings
efy
and
ify
are not a difficult problem because there are only three anomalies. The verb suffix
fy
means
“to make or to become,”
and there are about one hundred words that use this suffix, which comes from the Latin
facere,
meaning
“to make.” Solidify,
for example, means
“to make solid.”

Spelling rule #1: The ending
ify
is used with almost all the words in this group: