Not my story, but a guy I knew who was a teacher in Newcastle (and it really only makes sense if you know the accent) had two words written by children in essays that he had to follow up and find out what they meant by hearing the kid say it out loud.
One was a material that the kid’s father made a rabbit hutch out of:
yrnetn
Wire netting
And the other was a kid’s favourite food:
metntatipi
Meat and tatty pie
Clearly, they are alluding to the divine – creating a work of art on your head which is a reference designed to make people think of the divine.
I don’t think it was a spelling error at all; it makes sense to me.
Yeah, If I had a choice between getting my hair cut at Divine Allusions or Divine Illusions, I’d pick the former. I don’t want a fakeout on my head.
Fine, but if you ever find yourself in Alaska, stop by Divine Aleutians.
None for all intensive porpoises.
I’m not sure if it really counts, but I always want to spell acceptable as acceptible. I pronounce -able slightly different from -ible, so those two words are pronounced differently (ack-SEP-tuh-buhl vs. ack-SEP-tih-buhl) In my mind, acceptable should be pronounced like the former, but it’s stuck in my head as the latter.
Am I making sense?
Similar to this, I hate seeing “wa-la!” or “walla!” in the place of “voila!”.
My daughter thought that a *bowen arrow *was a specific type of weapon.
As a kid I was frustrated by my classmates writing “sike” for “psyche.” Come on, it’s a mind thing!
I’m now proud of my 7-year-old’s fearless readiness to write words she’s never seen, like “aquamarine,” which she rendered a while back as “okwamaryn.”
It’s actually nothing to do with “amplify.” That’s Latin.
The “amphi-” is Greek, meaning of both kinds or on both sides. Thus “amphibian.”
The classical Greek theater, or viewing place, was a tiered semicircle–now often called an amphitheater. But a true amphitheater is like two theaters together, on both sides, making a complete or nearly-complete ring–what we’d often call a stadium.
I still get this wrong on those extremely rare occasions when I have to spell it. And I have a non-rhotic accent, so for me they’re pronounced the same!
I thought this was going to have some sort of relation to “bedsit” when I first saw the word! 
(I probably also subconsciously saw the words “room” and “place” looming further on.)
As a child from a learned (that’s learn-ED) family, but book-oriented, I knew very well what a vagina was from reading, but the word was never spoken in my family, at least not at the dinner table. I assumed it was pronounced VAG-in-uh, rhymes with BAG-in-uh. My first real girlfriend set me straight, as it were.
Ahh – good point. When I first read clitoris I though it sort of rhymed with the mouthwash Lavoris — Kly - TAW – riss.
I thought something similar. I remember my mother telling me at some point in elementary school that I would be encountering “essay questions” soon. I heard that as “S.A. Questions”, but I don’t recall being too concerned about what it stood for.
I used “wa-la” in an essay when I was in 5th grade = voila
I want to spell ***exorbitant ***= “exorbinant” because most folks roll over the first T and it sounds more N-ish
I want to spell ***larynx ***= “larnyx” because, I swear, that is what I hear when most people say it. Lar-nyx.
Yeah, too late I realized, then I hoped no one would notice. Thanks for noticing. 
:o;)