Is there is a rule or rules that can help me spell any new word I hear?

In English?  Nope!

I'm sorry to say that there is no such rule. English pronunciation and English spelling often don't match. For example, think about tough, though, trough, and through. The "ough" is pronounced differently in all four words.

English words come from so many different places and have been tweaked around in so many different ways that it's basically impossible to have such rules. Spelling Bee kids study for years intense etymology and stuff to just be able to GUESS how certain words MIGHT be spelled after being educated on their origins, definitions, etc. And even then they easily get them wrong! For English, the best thing to do is just look up the proper spelling :) Sadly it can be hard sometimes if you only heard it spoken and it has a strange spelling...

No. English spelling only loosely reflects pronunciation, so even though one can usually predict how to say a word pretty closely if they already know the spelling, the reverse (i.e. predicting spelling from pronunciation) is less often true. This is true even for natives when encountering new words. There are some very broad patterns in both directions, but it’s best to learn a word’s spelling as part of learning new vocabulary.

I think it's understandable that other commenters say there aren't rules to guessing spelling, but that isn't completely true. There are patterns that are held more often than not. And these patterns are essentially loose rules. While every word could have multiple spellings, there are limits to how far English writers would deviate from expected spellings. Otherwise, I doubt even natives could learn to spell many words. Some hearing-to-spelling "rules" for Australian English are listed [here](https://dsf.net.au/professionals/teachers-and-tutors/intervention-strategies/spelling-rules-and-guidelines?srsltid=AfmBOopq_IGBp2U4o0fO2i7azZ2t7R-7JEBssPHzeHIKJdGBL9X1lAWh). Here are some [British spelling rules](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/spelling) from the Cambridge Dictionary. But as Cambridge warns, they only apply 75% of the time. I imagine the Australian guide covers a similar percentage of words. The exceptions are difficult, though. There are lots of them, but here's two that are most useful to know. If a word is borrowed from a country that uses the "same" alphabet as English, regardless of how they pronounce their letters, English will keep the "original spelling", while taking out all accents, marks, and changing foreign letters to the closest looking one in English. In fact, I bet the Swedes *love* it when "å" is assumed to be pronounced the same as "a". And let's not even get into the Polish "Ł" (English speakers pronounce it like an "l" when it's pronounced like their "w"). All this means knowing the etymology is essential. Fortunately, you can get a rough idea of how English may change/keep the pronunciation of words from different languages after a while, though I admit it isn't easy. Another complication to be aware of is where the sounds in the language don't perfectly correlate with English or there are dialectal differences in the language English is borrowing from, and it isn't clear which letters English should pick. The problem is really bad in Arabic. One newspaper found [112 spellings](https://www.westword.com/news/top-112-spellings-of-moammar-gadhafi-or-gaddafi-or-qaddafi-or-kadafi-5875642) of Gadaffi's name, though most Arabic spelling variations aren't that bad. Still "Quaran" can be spelt "Koran", and you should always ask how to spell "Mahammed". Fortunately some languages like Japanese have standard conventions for how there words are spelt ion English and are actually quite easy for native English speakers to write. I've seen [some rules](https://www.zompist.com/spell.html) for the other way round, which might be also help. But being English, they don't work all the time, just at least 85% of the time. You'll notice that within the rules are exceptions, which are a necessary part of the overall rules.This set of rules are for American English, so there are some spelling differences in other dialects.

No. Welcome to the wonderful world of spelling in English. In general, you can't tell how a word is pronounced from how it is written, and you can't tell how a word is written from how it is pronounced.

Unfortunately, no, not in English. There are patterns that might help you *guess* a word’s pronunciation, but no spelling “rule” in English is completely consistent. If you’re unsure of the pronunciation of a new word, it’s best to just memorize it.

Sadly there is no one set of rules. There are rules that are \*mostly\* true within a particular word origin - pre-Anglo, Germanic, French, Greek, Latin, etc) but nothing universal. What makes it more complicated is that not all words made it into English in the same way. We have Latin that entered English directly from classical sources and Latin that entered English after spending years within French first.

No, many words that have the same pronunciation are spelled differently, like rite and write, or words that are spelled similarly that can have different pronunciations, like read (reed) and read (red). Or dough (doe) and tough (tuff). Just gotta memorize

You can technically if you know which language the word comes from, like all words from French has the same french spelling tricks. However that's not something that anyone outside of language nerds know and it's easier to just memorize the words. There's only a few options on how to spell most sounds so you'll only get it wrong a few times.

Sorry. I once heard a joke that other languages don’t have spelling bees. Welcome to learning English!

That's a great question! English spelling can be tricky, but there are some general rules that help, like "i before e except after c" and common patterns for prefixes and suffixes. However, because English borrows words from many languages, sometimes you just have to memorize the spelling. If you want, we cover helpful spelling tips like this in our Skool community for English learners — feel free to send me a DM if you’d like to join!

No. A PhD in historical linguistics, a sound working knowledge of Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Anglo Saxon, and reading the complete works of Shakespeare might get you a start on it. It's a bit like kanji. There's radicals and stuff to help.

There are some basic rules, but most words you've learned already use those rules, and more complex words that you have not learned go off on their own tangent.

I’ve been reading and writing in English my whole life and I still suck at spelling.

Nah, this is English you’re talking about! Don’t worry, even native speakers have to check spelling sometimes. Some of our words have roots in other languages, so they would be impossible to spell using English phonetics, for example “lieutenant” or “buffet”.

As another commenter said, it's not really true that there are no rules. But you do need to know how the word entered English in order to figure it out, and even then the rules are more like guidelines. If a word entered recently, the spelling probably matches how it is spelled in the language it was borrowed from, or at least the romanization of that language (if it came from Mandarin, Arabic, or other languages that don't use the Latin alphabet.) If it came from Greek or Latin, it *probably* uses the ancient greek or Lartin spelling except that some words of Greek origin will use "c" instead of "k." If the word entered English from Norman French, then it probably uses a more French-style spelling unless it's American English - then it's *mostly* French spelling except that final "-re" beomces "-er" and "-our" becomes "-or" (usually, but not always.) If the word has been in English since the time of Middle English, then the word is spelled in a way that more accurately reflects how it *used to be* pronounced hundreds of years ago.

There’s nothing that comes to mind, but I hesitate to flat out say no. Plenty others have pointed out the English is not consistent with its spelling. However, native speakers *are* frequently able to spell words correctly after only hearing them. So while there might not be “rules” in the typical sense, there must certainly be patterns that you can learn.

Watch this video, and then you tell me. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfRSvTSY0d4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfRSvTSY0d4)

English orthography sucks. You just have to memorize a lot of word spellings. Although luckily, spelling errors also aren’t very important. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_orthography Here’s the Wikipedia page on English orthography, but it’s not very useful since English has very few phonics rules and can have over a dozen different ways to write one phoneme.

Not in English

There are, lots of them, many contradictory, and they all have exceptions. What you are talking about is "phonics" – the rules about how sounds (phonemes) match letter combinations (graphemes). I don't have links to any good online resources for learning phonics for spelling as an adult, but there are in-person classes, and I'm sure there are online resources somewhere you can look for. But, again, the term for what you are looking for is "phonics."

Any rules of use have so many exceptions that there might as well not be rules in some cases. You really just have to read and write English a lot. Not to mention dialect differences.

Yes and no. The thing with English is it’s a huge mix of many different languages and influences. If you know which language the word originates from you may have an idea of which spelling rules it uses. This is why in spelling bees they ask for the word origin. That being said, you can learn a rule and there will be a million exceptions to the rule that you have to remember.

Not really hard-and-fast rules, but there are definitely patterns you can look for. For instance, suffixes you might see on a lot of different words, like -tion (pronounced kind of like shun) or -ation (AY-shun): action contribution imagination industrialization communication function gumption transportation carnation Many of these are the noun form of a verb (communicate — communication, contribute — contribution, industrialize — industrialization and you drop the e at the end of the root word when adding the suffix) but -sion can also be used the same way (I think the difference is because verbs like confuse and fuse already had an S towards the end?) confusion (kuhn-FYOO-zhun) fusion (FYOO-zhun) passion (PASH-shun) ...but fashion for some reason has an -shion There is also -sian (zhun) or -tian (shun) which I think are usually for certain demonyms. Asian (Asia) Malaysian (Malaysia) Caucasian (relating to the Caucasus mountains/the fancy term for "white" people) Haitian (Haiti) Martian (Mars) Laotian (Laos) Whereas many other demonyms end in -ese (Japanese, Chinese, Maltese, Senegalese) or -ish (Irish, British, Scottish, Finnish, Swedish, English, Spanish). Good luck! Don't be discouraged by everyone saying there are no rules to English spelling. There are, you just have to look. :)

There's no rules.  But you can do it through tough thorough thought though.

Yeah…, sorry about that. It’s pretty much an alphabet free-for-all.

Yes, English has spelling rules. But, as you know, rules have exceptions

Haha!! Sorry, no. Not possible. Every native English speaker knows this all too well.

"Check the dictionary" Seriously, it is a mistake to treat English as a phonetically written language. Treat it like the complete words, or at least the complete morphemes, are like Chinese characters and start memorizing.

No. If you take into account the language of origin, you can probably figure out the rules that will help you somewhat but so many words were arbitrarily changed during the standardization of English that no rules are going to be 100% accurate or even 90%.

Yes: go to a dictionary (like Collins) that has IPA transcriptions and recordings for British and American English. Rule of thumb: most uncommon words derive from Latin and are regular. The ones that have maintained a pronunciation different from the usual patterns are in frequent enough use that you should run into most of them before too long.

In English? Not really. But I did see a fascinating flow chart once that showed how English speakers instinctively decide how nonsense words are pronounced (surprisingly, they mostly agree!) I wonder if that would help you? I'll try and find it in the wilds of the internet. Edit:alas, I could not <cry emoji> But the main point was this: through familiarity with the patterns of our language, most of us have an instinct about what a new word sounds like. (We're sometimes wrong, of course, because English is what you get when you crumple German, Latin, and Greek into a wad and roll it through all the world's other languages.) But generally we're pretty good at guessing. This might help you spell words you hear? Maybe? But until I find out where that flowchart is— and now all of a sudden I'm thinking it might have been a video where the teacher *drew* a flowchart— you're left with: do what we do. Just take a guess!

Nope haha sorry Best you can do is listen to audiobooks and/or hope for the best, like if you hear someone say "fane" (not a word), you know that rain sounds like that, you know that reign sounds like that, so in this case the spelling is "feign", not fain or fane. There is no way to know. Many native English speakers don't know the spelling or definition of every word. If you really want to get good at knowing what ANY word means, how it's spelled, even how it's pronounced, learn Latin. The years of Latin I did in secondary school have taught me way more about English (and French and Spanish) than any English class ever did. Loads of our nouns come from Latin.

Yes, English spelling is famously conducive to spelling rules. Logic and consistency reigns supreme.

The very epitome of "laughs" in British (English).

This is so challenging that native English speakers literally have competitions about how to spell words. They're called ["spelling bees"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_bee). At its simplest level, the words will be fairly common words that the competitor has probably seen and heard before, and it's more about memory. But at the highest levels, e.g. in the [Scripps National Spelling Bee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripps_National_Spelling_Bee), the words will be obscure and complex, and the contestant may never have heard them before. The contestant is allowed to ask the judge questions about the word to use as clues: * What is the definition of the word? * What part of speech is the word? (noun, verb, adjective, etc.) * What is the language of origin (prior to English)? * Does it have alternate pronunciations? This information is useful because it can help you think of related words that might be spelled similarly, or identify which letters may be used to represent which sounds -- for example, only words derived from Greek will use 'ph' to represent the F sound. Alternate pronunciations might help if a vowel is ambiguous in the normal pronunciation. But even with all this information, native speakers still cannot get it right with perfect accuracy, otherwise it wouldn't work as a competition. Sometimes, the only way to know how to spell something for sure is to be told and to remember.

Not really. I think you need to be a native speaker and have a diverse vocabulary to even get close to guessing the spelling of a new word with any sort of accuracy based on similar sounding words you know and i guess “vibes”.

Not rules, but if you study Latin and Greek root words, prefixes, and suffixes, this will get you far!

“i” before “e” except after “c” and in words that are weird, like neighbor and weigh In other words, nope!