# Do other languages have the two correct spellings for the same word? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 14, 2023, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558 "2023-10-14T11:54:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2023, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/41 "2023-10-14T19:38:24Z")
There are TONS in Welsh, because it is acceptable to spell your dialect’s words phonetically. From the book open in front of me right now: _sgŵl_ / _scŵl_ (this is “school” in Welsh spelling, but the novel uses both forms as well as the Welsh _ysgol_). _llwybyr_ / _llwybr_ “path” _dod_ / _dŵad_ “come” (again, both used in the book—formal _dyfod_ isn’t used, at least not yet—I’m only on p. 13) _ia_ / _ie_ “yes” Dictionaries will sometimes list multiple forms, sometimes not, especially if it’s just a common dialectal sound change. Some dictionaries list only _dyfod,_ some only _dod_. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2023, 7:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/42 "2023-10-15T07:25:16Z")
> [@Pardel-Lux](#): > > What really confuses me are words in different languages that are written differently, one of the worst is carousel (one r, one s, one l), German Karussell (one r, two s, two l), French carrousel (two r, one s, one l), Italian carosello (one r, one s, two ll, also called _giostra_), Spanish carrusel (like French, but with an u instead of an ou, also called _tiovivo_). This example of variations of doubled letters makes me think of certain city names shared between countries. I once compiled a list of city names where an American city was named for a foreign one. Sometimes the names were the same except for doubled/not doubled letters. Three examples I can think of off-hand: Montpellier, France vs Montpelier, Vermont Hannover, Germany vs Hanover (various states) Monterrey, Mexico vs Monterey (various states) In the last example, most of the Monterey’s in the US take their name from a Mexican-American War battle fought at Monterrey. However the Monterey in California does not, since it was around before that war. ETA: Anyone interested in that list of city names can find it here: > **[List of U.S. places named after non-U.S. places](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._places_named_after_non-U.S._places)** > > There are many places in the United States that are named after places in another country. By far, the majority of the names came from immigrants naming their new home after their former home. As such, they reflect the pattern of immigration to the United States. Immigrants did not just settle in random locations, but rather congregated with others who spoke the same language and had the same religion. Three examples: > Less concentrated groupings of foreign place names are Norwegian names throu... ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2023, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/43 "2023-10-15T15:40:26Z")
The OED lists _amuck_ and even _a muck_ as variants of _amok_. ---
**Author:** ![Danger\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6de8d8/32.png) [@Danger\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danger_Man)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2023, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/44 "2023-10-15T18:12:17Z")
Instead of listing languages that have alternetive spellings for the same word, we should instead try to find languages that do not. Are there any? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2023, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/45 "2023-10-15T22:22:38Z")
I have both a chequing (CAD) and a checking (USD) account. I was really put off by the two spellings in the Spelling Bee. And they were the two pangrams too. Ambiance was the only word between me and Queen Bee. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/46 "2023-10-16T03:40:39Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I was really put off by the two spellings in the Spelling Bee. And they were the two pangrams too. Ambiance was the only word between me and Queen Bee. I agree with that, although I did get both spellings of this word. (I missed a couple others, one of which I _thought_ I’d entered, but hadn’t.) But I really wish they’d get rid of all the multiple spellings in their official list. They got rid of most of them, but I have a list of 30-odd words where they haven’t. If anyone’s interested, I can post it. Or maybe we should start an ongoing Spelling Bee thread just for that. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/47 "2023-10-16T17:01:30Z")
The Academie Francaise has suggested some spelling changes, but I don’t think they have caught on. For example, onion is either oignon (old way) versus ognon (new). There are various accent marks on vowels in French. In practice they are optional on capital letters. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/48 "2023-10-16T17:16:06Z")
Indonesian does, for two reasons I can think of: first, they changed the official spelling system in 1972, but remnants of old spellings still persist, especially for proper nouns like Jogjakarta/Yogyakarta. Another reason is the close relationship between Javanese and Indonesian, but while some words are the same the orthography is different (O and A are sort of reversed) and people are often careless about the spelling they use. A lot of gamelan song titles can be spelled two ways - Puspawarna/Puspowarno, for example. Or a phrase like “retno budoyo” v. “retna budaya” (meaning “women’s culture”). (This is my layperson’s take on things, for sure. A linguist would probably wince and say, “she’s not wrong, but her characterizations are inexact. It would be more correct to say …”) ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/49 "2023-10-16T17:30:03Z")
To name an example from a non-alphabetic script: The People’s Republic of China undertook a major reform of Chinese characters in the 1950s to 1970s to simplify particularly complicated ones, and the reformed spelling has official status there. Most Westerners who study Chinese as a foreign language (not limited to Mandarin) will learn the simplified ones, at least initially; but the reform was not implemented in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, or Japan (where many Chinese characters, called kanji, are in use alongside Japanese scripts). As a result, there are two divergent ways of spelling many Chinese words that co-exist in parallel. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/50 "2023-10-16T21:14:25Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > There are various accent marks on vowels in French. In practice they are optional on capital letters. Not in Quebec. About 40 years ago, the Quebec ministry of education bought 50,000 microcomputers from France for somewhere between 50 and 100 million. When it turned out that they didn’t put accents on capitals, they went into a warehouse until the French company came up with a fix. They never did and after maybe 20 years of paying storage costs, they junked them. Of course they were utterly obsolete by then. ---
**Author:** ![hibernicus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hibernicus/32/2802_2.png) [@hibernicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hibernicus)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/51 "2023-10-16T21:20:07Z")
> [@Danger\_Man](#): > > Instead of listing languages that have alternetive spellings for the same word, we should instead try to find languages that do not. Are there any? I don’t know but I would start by narrowing down to languages that have a single standard written variety and where orthography is a good phonemic representation of the spoken language. Finnish would be a good bet. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/52 "2023-10-16T21:20:10Z")
Federal government has also required accents on upper-case letters for a long time. I first heard about it back in the 80s. ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/53 "2023-10-16T22:28:59Z")
😯 I’d heard that the Quebecois were a lot more strict about accents than other Francophones. I didn’t know that they would go that far. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/54 "2023-10-16T23:12:08Z")
Chinese character simplification is a complicated [story](https://pages.ucsd.edu/~dkjordan/chin/SimplifiedCharacters.html) and we cannot always unequivocally say that the resulting character is not the “same” as the original any more than an italic letter is not the same as the corresponding Roman letter, but, yes, some words in Chinese may be spelled differently (using variant/different characters), in any case. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/55 "2023-10-16T23:14:35Z")
> [@zimaane](#): > > the Quebecois \< cough \> “the Québécois” \< cough \> ---
**Author:** ![bordelond](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bordelond/32/150_2.png) [@bordelond](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bordelond)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/56 "2023-10-16T23:27:04Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > I don’t know but I would start by narrowing down to languages that have a single standard written variety and where orthography is a good phonemic representation of the spoken language. **Finnish would be a good bet.** Even with Finnish, though, **[borrowings can muddy the waters a bit](https://www.finnishpod101.com/blog/2021/05/13/english-loanwords-in-finnish/)**: > Confusing to language learners and native Finns alike, both the original spelling and an adapted spelling of the same word may be in use. For example, take a look at these two musical genres: > > - _ **jazz** _ / _ **jatsi** _ (“jazz”) > - _ **country** _ / _ **kantri** _ (“country”) Although one suspects _jazz_ and _jatsi_ are not pronounced exactly the same in the course of Finnish conversation. Maybe they are by some speakers. Still in all, though … Finnish seems to have fewer “_two correct spellings_” words than other European languages. ---
**Author:** ![Mark\_Finn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@Mark\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mark_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2023, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/57 "2023-10-18T17:21:37Z")
Kazakhstan is changing its alphabet again - the third time in the last century. The Soviets mandated a change from their Arabic script in 1924, and they chose the Latin alphabet. Then - in 1940 - the Soviets mandated a change to Cyrillic. Skip to 2021, and they are changing back to the Latin alphabet. A lot of red tape to rewrite signs, etc. with the correct corresponding Latin letters. [Kazakhstan’s alphabet switch reflects wider societal changes (emerging-europe.com)](https://emerging-europe.com/news/kazakhstans-alphabet-switch-reflects-wider-societal-changes/) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 18, 2023, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558/58 "2023-10-18T20:18:31Z")
Also says pretty clearly which side of the Russia / West divide Kazakhstan saw as being the future they wanted to be part of. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-other-languages-have-the-two-correct-spellings-for-the-same-word/991558.md?page=2)