I wonder how native English speakers do it, but here’s how I approach this problem.
My trick involves using a consistent spelling system for encoding a random letter sequence into a sound which I can memorize. When writing, you just pull those auditory memories, decode the sounds back to the original alphabet salad, and you’re done! Needlessly complicated, but that’s a common theme in English anyway, so it should fit right in.
To make this method work, you need a consistent spelling system, so you could make one up or modify one previously invented for another language. Basically anything more consistent than English should do, so it’s a pretty low bar to clear.
Here are some example words to test this idea with:
- carburetor
- carburettor
- carburetter
Pronounce those letter sequences using that alternate spelling system. It won’t sound like English, but it’s consistent and that’s all we care about at this stage. The end of each word could sound like this:
- [retor]
- [retːor]
- [reter]
In my system, each letter corresponds to a specific sound like e=[e], a=[ɑ] etc. I’ve been thinking of including the Italian c=[tʃ], but you could use other languages too. Feel free to mix and match, as long as you make it consistent.
The idea is that it’s easier to memorize sounds rather than whimsical letter sequences. Once you have those funny sounds in your head, it’s easy to use that same consistent spelling system to convert the sound back to letters.
Once you know that trick, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to spell common words like “island”, “salmon”, “subtle”, or “wednesday. For example “cache” could be stored as [tʃatʃe] in my head. Still haven’t settled on a good way to store the letter c, so I’m open to suggestions.
I don't know how common it is, but I've definitely seen almost this exact technique being taught to native-speaking English kids in school as a way of helping with spelling.
I suspect some people do this naturally as well: sometimes for me it can be difficult to see "Wednesday" without hearing a little voice saying "wedd-nez-day" in my head. What's a bit weird is that the idea doesn't seem to have a common name. Maybe someone else will find it and let us know.
That’s very interesting. To me, this way is so natural, that I’m not surprised that other people are also using it.
That little voice is super handy. I just can’t remember a million obscure spellings coming from twenty different countries and periods in history. Just memorize the sound like [wɛdɛzdɛi], convert it back to letters, and you’re spelling correctly.
Although, you would still need to remember that [dɛi] is spelled “day”, but you could make that a rule in your system. However, the letter a and y can be pronounced in various other ways too, so you might run into some problems down the line.
This is one of the examples where I like our crazy words because it shows what these were.
The Sun's Day
The Moon's day
Tiw's Day (a god of war)
Odin's Day - Wodensdag - Wednesday
Thor's day, Thursday.
Friday - Frigga's Day
Saturday we get from the Latin, right? Saturn's day.
So when I am remembering Wednesday it's always just Odin's Day Wodensdag Wednesdag Wednesday, I don't think about it phonetically since I hear it and see it all the time. But I like the word.
A lot of our really not phonetic words work like that, I'm sure Through used to be pronounced more like Thrugh and now it's throo we just kept the written word the same.