Claudia in The Baby-sitter's Club always mixes up with the spellings of words. The same word can be spelt in quite a few ways. We all have been told that the grammar and the language of English breaks rules more often than it abides by them.

Kannada being my mother tongue, i shamelessly declare that my awareness of the rich literature that is associated with the language is poor. According to me, in Kannada we've specific spellings for words. What i mean to say is, one can never go wrong with the spelling and the pronunciation of the same word. We read as it is written.

But, with English, it isn't so. Words spelled similarly are pronounced differently and vice versa. We've also come across misspelt words reading them correctly. I guess, it's the permanent imprint on the brain that produces this result, be it in any language.

Perhaps, it is only the root of a word which assigns it a particular pronunciation (and meaning, of course) so as to say.