Growing up in Canada, I had to contend with learning two different spellings and pronunciations for words like “schedule”, “colour”, “omelette”, “zed” vs “zee”, “-ise” vs “-ize”, and so on and so forth, so I had to come up with some little tricks to remember how to spell things. Sometimes I’d put on a mental Quebecois or English accent.
Other ones like diarrhea was “Die-err-HEE-uh”, and now that I’m in Australia, it’s most definitely “Die-err-HOE-uh”. 😂
I also recite the ABCs more often than I should. I know a lot of you do, too.
What are some ways that you thought of to help you remember how to spell things? Any language counts.


As an Australian and sounding it out to myself more than a few times I would say its more die-OH-rhee-ah. But the fuck do I know?
Oh, okay; the original comment put it as “roe,” the penultimate syllable. That was what I found to be bizarre.
Me too which is why I literally sat here saying diarrhoea to myself for 5 minutes straight.
I’ve had a big day so I haven’t had time to respond to all of the comments, but this cracked me up so I have to explain now before sleep, haha. I’m so sorry for laughing. What I meant is just for the spelling of diarrhea vs diarrhoea.
However, I did spend a lot of time in regional Victoria waaaay out west (7 years) and they really did border on saying “diarr-roy-uh”… Or “diarr-ROYEE-uh”. There’s really no way of putting some Aussie pronunciations in to words. Maybe occa. When I first saw “naur”, it was so odd, but it kinda works.