Someone asked me, in a chat, how things are going. I wanted to write, “you know, the …” and use the shortening of “usual”, but I couldn’t figure out how to spell it. This article suggests some spellings, but they’re all terrible.
It occurred to me that the sound is essentially unspellable in English. We could all agree on a spelling, but whatever it would be would be really odd.
Another one that’s not quite as bad is “Aaaugh” or “Aaaah” or however you would spell the exasperated or frightened sound. But, that’s not a word, it’s more of a sound effect, and there are lots of sound effects we can make that can’t be spelled.
Are there other spoken words that basically don’t have a spelling?
In many many languages there are phonemes or allophones that don’t have a specific spelling. English has several. Indeed, it’s more common for vowels than with consonants. The English alphabet has only five vowel letters (plus maybe one more, sometimes), but most Standard English varieties have around 20 vowel phonemes. That’s why when you use the International Phonetic Alphabet, there are many special characters to transcribe those sounds.
Right, but are their fairly common spoken words that are just difficult or impossible to come up with a reasonable spelling for? I can’t think of any others.
OK, I’m not looking for words in other languages that would be difficult or impossible to write in English. I’m looking for words that English speakers say that can’t be spelled.
@Hari_Seldon, I don’t know what you mean – do you mean the plural of two? Twos seems to be accepted.
There’s a series of sounds that I use as an equivalent of “I don’t know” that can’t be spelled. It’s really a tonal series, which is interesting, because English is not usually described as a tonal language, but everyone knows what it means.
If it’s a word in English, I’m also unaware of it. What are you trying to describe? Do you mean, whaa?
Mmhmm seems really clear to me, and in any case, isn’t a word, it’s a sound effect like “aaaaugh”.
How would you spell “the us[ual]”? It’s a spoke word, not a grunt or sound effect.
I guess I’m really not making myself clear here. I’m not saying that there aren’t sounds that English speakers make that can’t be written. I’m saying that there aren’t many words that English speakers say that can’t be written.
That’s the thing! I can’t tell you what it is without spelling it out. Imagine you are gobsmacked and instead of the interjection “What!?”, you say “gwaah!?” or maybe just “whaaa…!?” from low pitch to a high pitch.
With the example you’ve given of “usual”, which obviously does have a spelling, I’m a bit unsure of what you are getting at. People sometimes get a feeling that the correct spelling of a word or any alternate spelling all seem wrong. Is that what you’re talking about?
That - words like marshmallow - seems to be different than what was described in the OP. It was the contraction of usual, not usual per se. So yuze, uzhe, yooze, etc. The link in the OP leads to a Merriam-Webster page which concludes there is no established spelling.
Similar to the example in the OP (a shortened version of usual): I have a good friend named Marcia not Marsha. Her primary nickname is, uh, the first syllable of Marcia.
Marsh? Well, that really won’t do, will it? The spelling she approves is Marc, and that’s what I use, but a stranger would have to know the context to pronounce it correctly.
See also, since it has the same ending, the abbreviation for ‘casual’.
“What’s the dress code to this function”
“Just cahj (cazh?)”
“What are you doing right now?”
“Just cazhing (cahjing?) out”.
Also, isn’t there an expression to “add a little (?) to something”, that I have no idea how to spell? I can’t even google anything approximating what its spelling must be to get a correct hit. It sounds kind of like ‘jeuzh’ as in,