Commonly misspelled words in German Commonly misspelled words in German Misspellings in German are a subcategory of orthographical errors (German: "Rechtschreibfehler"), counter the rules of German orthography. Although there is some variance following the current 'optional' status of the German spelling reform of 1996. Misspelling in German is less common than in English since most words are spelled as they are pronounced. Exceptions however occur, as for the (in modern German) identical "ä" and "e" both representing the IPA [ε] sound. Confusion can also occur with homonyms as verb prefixes: "wiederspiegeln" (incorrect) vs. "widerspiegeln" (correct). Misspellings of German words, outside Germany, also occur - for
English words of Greek origin to recognize words of Greek origin, and give hints as to their pronunciation and inflection. Some romanizations are not completely standard. The Ancient Greek diphthongs and may be spelled in three different ways in English: the digraphs "ae" and "oe"; the ligatures "æ" and "œ"; and the simple letter "e". The ligatures have largely fallen out of use worldwide; the digraphs are uncommon in American usage, but remain common in British usage. The spelling depends mostly on the variety of English, not on the particular word. Examples are: "encyclopaedia" / "encyclopædia" / "encyclopedia", "haemoglobin" / "hæmoglobin" / "hemoglobin", "oedema" /