Susie Dent
speaker
248 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2026
last heard 7 May
Susie Dent’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in May 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So spelling is one of the trickiest educational journeys I think any of us will ever make.
The word physique, that's a really tough one for anyone to learn.
I looked it up and lo and behold, in its earliest days, we actually spelt it with an F.
So we had kind of made it easier, although it came from Greek.
The thing about many of the words that we struggle with is they've come through so many different languages and sort of morphed along the way.
So spelling is one of the trickiest educational journeys I think any of us will ever make.
Until the days of printing, which obviously standardized spelling because information could be disseminated much more widely.
It was glorious in a way.
It was full of words from local dialects.
Shakespeare famously, his name was spelled in so many different ways in his lifetime.
He himself spelled it differently on his will.
I think not twice, but three times.
So it was very chaotic.
And I think because people weren't traveling particularly widely, it didn't matter quite as much as it does today.
So many of these have lovely etymologies, which in turn can help you learn the spelling.
Possibly the T, for sure.
Yes, that's a good example.
I think the second one was mischievous, which I'm pretty sure is now being spelt mischievous because that's how it's being spelt.
because people are moving it towards devious, a word that they're familiar with.
And I think in the study, actually, several experts were quoted and said, this isn't just sort of sloppiness.
Showing 221–240 of 248 · page 12 of 13
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