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Note that this is not the same as What is it called when words are deliberately spelled incorrectly but pronunciation is kept unchanged? because that question is about deliberate misspellings, whereas this one is about unwitting misspellings.

Many people unknowingly spell an English word exactly as they would pronounce it, which can lead to a misspelling.

Examples:

1.Elifant or Elifent for elephant.

"She ran away on seeing the elifant."

2.Shiwawa for Chihuahua.

"Their dog is a Shiwawa."

This is related to not knowing the correct spelling of the word, and is a common type of mistake made even by native speakers of English, though probably not with 'elephant'; for instance I remember a native speaker cuttingly reject some good advice from a moderator at a car audio forum with the sentence:

You need not lekcher me about the rules of this forum. I am no neofite here.

Sample sentence for SWR:

Writing 'elifent' for 'elephant' unwittingly, based on its pronunciation would be an example of ______________.

The correct term is not transliteration, and google search did not prominently turn up a pointer to such a word:

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=misspelling+words+according+to+pronunciation

So what is the English word for "misspelling words based on their pronunciation?"

A very good option already suggested kindly by @Lawrence is "phonetic spelling" (or phonetic misspelling) but can someone find a single word to express the same meaning?

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English Student
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    Phoenetic spelling, perhaps? – Lawrence Jul 22 '17 at 10:33
  • No problem :) . I put it up as a comment because I wasn't sure whether the term referred more to IPA spelling than to the hear-and-write spelling that uses the usual 26-letter alphabet. – Lawrence Jul 22 '17 at 10:49
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    @Lawrence I am not so sure about the technical definition but the phrase 'phonetic spelling' or 'phonetic misspelling' instantly conveys my meaning of "spelling a word as it would be pronounced." Now i have edited it into the question. – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 10:52
  • I remember in Prep, my teacher used to tell us to try and spell words by "sounding them out". But that's not a singool werd ;) – Dog Lover Jul 22 '17 at 11:03
  • @Dog Lover that's because English words are not written exactly as pronounced, or pronounced exactly as written, unlike other languages like Malayalam, one of my native tongues, which pronounces every letter exactly as written (with allowances for minor local dialectical variations), and writes every word including foreign words exactly as pronounced -- so it's one of the most literal languages in that aspect. – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 11:10
  • The not knowing how to spell English words, apparently simple as elephant ( I have yet to see this as a common misspelling) falls into semi-illiteracy. But a mod has reopened your question, so I must be wrong! I would say spelling a word as it sounds is as deliberate as someone writing nite for night or thru instead of through. Note too that the answer phonetic was also posted in the older question. – Mari-Lou A Jul 22 '17 at 14:40
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    @Mari-LouA I disagreed with the duplicate, because this question is about unknowingly (possibly even daftly) misspelling something because the correct spelling is not known, whereas the other one is about a deliberate misspelling even though the correct way is known. It's possible that something like "phonetic spelling" is the answer to both questions, but the questions are distinctly different. – Andrew Leach Jul 22 '17 at 14:44
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    Maybe a quibble, but Shiwawa or Shihuahua wouldn't be a phonetic spelling of Chihuahua (because Chi and Shi are not at all alike), but rather a made-up name for a cross between a Shi Tsu and a Chihuahua, in the a Labradoodle is a cross between Labrador and Poodle. – jamesqf Jul 22 '17 at 16:46
  • @jamesqf somebody just told me that 'shiwawa' is a literal spelling of how some people pronounce Chihuahua, which would make it rather a misspelling coming from a mispronunciation. As in, somebody reads Chihuahua and mispronounces it as 'Shiwawa'; somebody else hears them and misspells it literally as 'Shiwawa.' Apparently that's why typing 'shiwawa dog' in google search takes us straight to Chihuahua dogs, as you can see in the question. – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 19:05
  • It is called American English. – Masked Man Jul 23 '17 at 08:50
  • @English Student: That Google link goes to Chihuahuas? Strange, then, that most of the images look like mixed breeds, and pretty much what I'd expect from a Shi Tsu - Chihuahua cross And very much the same as I get searching for "Shi Tsu Chihuahua cross": https://www.google.com/search?complete=0&hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=%22shi+tsu%22+chihuahua+cross&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=2 – jamesqf Jul 23 '17 at 17:10
  • @jamesqf I wouldn't know the difference between those breeds but I think you have made a very intriguing observation that requires further study! My only question: is Chihuahua (dog breed) routinely pronounced anywhere as 'Shiwawa?' – English Student Jul 23 '17 at 17:15
  • @jamesqf I did a bit more googling and found this page that refers to a Shih Tzu // Chihuahua hybrid dog as a Shichi or Shi Chi -- check it out at https://www.dogbreedinfo.com/shichi.htm and also this generic google search for shichi which might clarify the situation. – English Student Jul 23 '17 at 17:22
  • *Shiwawa* seems to be the Welsh word for Chihuahau, so perhaps Welsh speakers of English would pronounce it that way. No one on Forvo pronounces it that way, though, in the US or UK (nor do any Spanish, Dutch, or Portuguese speakers). It's much more common for the rare CH that ought to be pronounced SH to be misspelled or mispronounced than for someone to mistakenly pronounce/spell a CH that is pronounced CH. – 1006a Jul 24 '17 at 22:09

4 Answers4

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Consider phonetic spelling.

Phonetic spelling constitutes an alteration of ordinary spelling that better represents the spoken language, that employs only characters of the regular alphabet, and that is used in a context of conventional spelling. - dictionary.com

The above article calls IPA an example of phonetic orthography, with the label phonetic spelling retained for the case where the ordinary alphabet is used. The following quote is consistent with this usage:

  • Start with words you already know. This will allow you come up with your own phonetic spellings. "Dog - Dahg" would be a very simple entry. Notice how "ah" makes the long "a" sound. Another example of a phonetic spelling would be "facade - fuh-sahd." - Phonetics Spelling Dictionary

Here's an article that uses the term phonetic misspelling in the sense you're looking for, courtesy of ... :) yourself:

Let's Teach Spelling - Not Phonetic Misspelling - Robert L Hillerich

The inverse (forming sounds from letters) is called phonics:

The goal of phonics is to enable beginning readers to decode new written words by sounding them out, or, in phonics terms, blending the sound-spelling patterns. Since it focuses on the spoken and written units within words, phonics is a sublexical approach and, as a result, is often contrasted with whole language, a word-level-up philosophy for teaching reading. - wikipedia

Lawrence
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    +1 Though do you Americans seriously say "dahg"? I know that short and long "oh" sounds in American English generally have a hint of long "ah", but I didn't think it was that much. – Dog Lover Jul 22 '17 at 11:15
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    @DogLover Haha, I'm not American. I favour BrE, except for spellings like "centre/center", where the 'tre' spelling just doesn't look as 'nice'. TV shows indicate that there are at least some dialects of AmE that use that long "ah" pronunciation for dog. – Lawrence Jul 22 '17 at 11:20
  • Goes to show that it's not always safe to assume that users without locations on their profile are American. The American accent does have indeed have its quirks and oddities. Like "booey" for "buoy" and (supposedly) "skwarrl" for "squirrel". – Dog Lover Jul 22 '17 at 11:25
  • The most famous example of an American contribution to phonetics, @Dog Lover, is apparently Eye-rack, which is yet to be resolved. – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 11:39
  • @EnglishStudent It's interesting you say that. I had a teacher though who wasn't American and she said "eye-rack". – Dog Lover Jul 22 '17 at 11:43
  • @DogLover I used to have a colleague from Israel, and found out that the "el" is pronounced separately in (some of?) their names. Makes sense, of course, once I stopped to think about it. – Lawrence Jul 22 '17 at 11:46
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    To generalize, @Dog Lover and Lawrence, it is simply our error insisting on pronouncing an unknown word by its spelling, which is the inverse of misspelling a word of unknown spelling by its sound. We could find out how it is actually pronounced, and be proud to pronounce it right. Although this particular example became famous for certain reasons of media coverage. Remember covfefe. [If I add another comment this whole section will be moved to chat.] – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 11:47
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    @DogLover No, we mostly say dawg. On the question of Eye-rack: When my brother was serving there in 2006, my then-toddler asked "why does Uncle live in a big dumb rock?" apparently because we were saying something like ə rɑk. – 1006a Jul 22 '17 at 16:49
  • @Dog Lover: Not all Americans would say "dahg" - I don't think I've ever heard it that way myself. If some do, it's probably a southeastern regional accent, and I've lived mostly in the west. – jamesqf Jul 22 '17 at 16:50
  • @jamesqf Most Americans do actually pronounce dog [dɑːɡ], with the same vowel as father. The vowel found in dog varies between /ɔ/ and /ɒ/, and [ɑ] is by far the predominant pronunciation for the latter of these. Additionally, a large part of American speakers exhibit the cot_–_caught merger, whereby /ɔ/ also ends up being pronounced as [ɑ]. Basically the only speakers that don't say [dɑːɡ] are those who a) have /dɔɡ/ as the phonemic structure, and b) don't have the cot_–_caught merger. That's a clear minority. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 23 '17 at 08:29
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet: Maybe so. I can only say that I can't recall ever hearing it pronounced that way. But then, I've never heard most Americans. – jamesqf Jul 23 '17 at 17:21
  • @jamesqf Just to check whether you're hearing actual dialectal differences: what about god? That has the cot vowel /ɒ/ everywhere and is pronounced with an [ɑ] by virtually all Americans. Do you perceive different vowels in dog and god as you generally hear them spoken? – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jul 23 '17 at 17:26
  • @Janus Bahs Jacquet: No, I don't really notice a difference between god and dog (in more ways than are applicable here :-)) Though I hear two pronounciations - god/dog and gawd/dawg (best I can do since I don't understand IPA). Indeed, I sometimes use either depending on context, though I'd say dog is the more natural. – jamesqf Jul 24 '17 at 17:02
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    If you want a single-word version to add to your answer, phoneticism might suit. It's generally synonymous with phonetic spelling, which I take to be ordinarily intentional, but one of the attestations from the OED uses it for exactly what the OP wants. – 1006a Jul 24 '17 at 22:12
  • @1006a Thanks, though it looks very much like DogLover's answer. – Lawrence Jul 25 '17 at 01:12
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    Yes, I just thought it was worth including somewhere, but probably not its own answer. @DogLover, please feel free to adopt, as well. The full relevant example: 1977 Daily Tel. 24 Feb. 18 Probably the most bizarre example of phoneticism I have ever come across was an 11-year-old's spelling of the word ‘usual’—‘yousyouall’. – 1006a Jul 25 '17 at 01:21
  • @1006a Thanks for the word; I'll add it to my answer. And thanks even more so for sharing such a wonderful example of phoneticism! Or should that be fonetasizem? – Dog Lover Jul 25 '17 at 01:26
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I'm not sure if it will work perfectly, but you might be able to use phoneticise.

phoneticize verb

  1. to represent speech in writing using a system in which individual symbols reflect speech sounds in a regular manner
  2. to increase the representation of written language using symbols or letters that correspond more closely or regularly to the sounds of the spoken language

Source: Collins

To expand on that, you could say:

Writing 'elifent' for 'elephant' would be an example of phoneticization - the word was misspelt because of how it sounds.

Another Word

1006a shared in the comments another good word that may work: phoneticism.

phoneticism noun

  1. a phonetic scheme of writing
  2. a form of spelling in which the spoken sound accords with a written symbol
  3. a way of working out the phonemes in a particular language due to phonetic resemblances

Source: Collins

Dog Lover
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  • Yes, this is another good option that nicely conveys the meaning! 'Phonetic spelling' suggested by Lawrence works for the same reason: because 'phonetic' so strongly connotes pronunciation. – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 11:14
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The word is "mistake."

There isn't going to be an entirely different word for every single kind of mistake. And not every idea has some obscure word to explain it. It was a "misspelling." Anything beyond that is over thinking it.

I wrestled a bear once.
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    Thank you. The thing is that if there is some linguistic term that covers this situation, the people most likely to know it are the members at ELU. Hence this question. If there is no such term, then 'spelling mistake' is just fine! – English Student Jul 22 '17 at 15:28
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Either mondegreen (from a mishearing of a line in an old ballad, "They have slain the Earl of Moray, and laid him on the green", which was then transcribed as "...and Lady Mondegreen"), or eggcorn (from a mishearing of acorn and the assumption that the fruit is the egg of an oak) might be useful.

NVZ
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Tim Lymington
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  • Many thanks @TimLymington for introducing me to 2 words that expressively convey my meaning! – English Student Jul 23 '17 at 07:00
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    Those seem to be (related but) different phenomena: In the misheard lyrics case, a totally different meaning is (mis-)understood (whereas the OP case certainly is about someone knowing that an "elifent" is a big grey animal). The second example might match a lot better, but instead of different phonetics it is based on misinterpreted etymology ... – Hagen von Eitzen Jul 23 '17 at 10:02