When reading and writing medical and nursing texts, Health Care Professionals require an understanding of medical, hospital and everyday health terminology.
As well as this, Health Care Professionals need to be able to write fluently in patient notes, in referral letters and when completing care plans or care pathways.
English for Medical Purposes:Spelling and Vocabulary
Glossary of Terms
U.S and British English
Why is it hard to spell in English ?
Various Spellings for the same sound
Homonyms, Homophones and Homographs
Why bother to spell properly?
Compound Words and Collocations
Use fo Definite and Indefinite Articles
Use of Capital Letters
Glossary of Hospital Terms
Why is it so hard to spell in English?
There are many reasons why English is considered one of the most difficult languages to spell. Here are a few:
English is not a phonetic language. In fact, it is called an ‘orthographically deep’ language because English letters often bear no resemblance to the sounds they represent. Around 90 sounds of English can be spelled in over 200 different ways. This makes spelling very difficult for everyone. The English writing system doesn’t match the sound system. There are too many sounds with not enough letters for each sound. Some sounds are spelled in a very strange way e.g ‘ph’ = ‘f’
There have been many historical changes which have given us a rich language (the upside) which is difficult to spell (the downside). Unfortunately, English has never had an Academy to regulate it and Spelling Reform hasn’t happened either.
English has a lot of ‘empty’ or silent letters. English has borrowed from many languages
over many centuries. Words were adapted and often changed in some way. One of the adaptations was a change in pronunciation sometimes without removing the letter which is no longer pronounced.