Avoiding spelling mistakes.

Phoenix     

Phoenix is the capital of the southwestern state of Arizona in the southwestern United States. The noun phoenix starting with a lower-case letter p refers to a mythological bird that supposedly lived for 500 or 600 years in the Arabian desert, burning itself in a fire and rising from the ashes to live again. Anything that looks like it was gone but reappears in good condition can be called phoenix-like. Possibly because writers of Thai English do not expect to see a word with a letter o followed by a letter e, the name of the city is sometimes spelled wrong as Phonix. There are a number of examples in English where the letter o and the letter e placed together result in a sound like ee. Apart from phoenix, there are also amoeba and the woman’s name Phoebe. If we invent sentences to help us remember the way words are used and spelled in English, we may prevent errors. So think about a very intelligent scientific researcher named Phoebe who studies an amoeba in a laboratory in the state of Arizona:

Phoebe studies an amoeba in Phoenix.

If we are sure about the spelling of one of the words in the above sentence, then we can be reassured about how to spell the other ones. There is also Phoenicia, an ancient Greek word used to describe a civilization that thrived in the Mediterranean region between 1500 BC and 300 BC, based in what is now Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Palestine and Syria. More than a place name, the noun phoenix is often used in titles of books and films, some of which are in the collection of the Thammasat University Libraries. Thai fans of martial arts films may have seen Raging Phoenix (จีจ้า ดื้อ สวย ดุ) in 2009, a popular movie starring Yanin (Jeeja) Vismistananda, directed by Rashane Limtrakul, with fight choreography by Panna Rittikrai. Harry Potter fans do not need to be reminded about Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. The TU Libraries also own such items as Korea: the Soaring Phoenix; New Phoenix Wings: Reparation in Literature; The Personal Income Tax: Phoenix from the Ashes; Eastern Phoenix: Japan since 1945; Korean Phoenix: a Nation from the Ashes; The Digital Phoenix: How Computers are Changing Philosophy; Phoenix Rising: 25 Years of the United Arab Emirates; and many others. The popularity of this word suggests that it is worth taking a little time to make sure to spell it correctly when it is used. Here are a few other usage examples that depend on context:

• Vietnam is a country on the move (a “rising Phoenix”) and is comparable to Thailand in many ways.
• Colourful and lively, the animation is centred on ancient Pokemon-like animals such as a white elephant, rabbit, peacock, phoenix and swan.
• Rising phoenix-like from defeat in the Second World War, by the late 1960s Japan accounted for half of Asia’s total GDP.

Autobiography

Autobiography is a noun meaning what is produced when people write their own life stories. Perhaps because the word autobiography is long and distinguished-looking, it usually refers to a whole book. If people write reminiscences about part of their lives, or shorter accounts of their lives that do not fill an entire book, these are usually called memoirs. Sometimes in Thai English we see the word spelled wrongly as autobiogrophy. This may be because the writer in haste sees the letter o used twice in the word and it somehow seems odd to add a letter a instead of another letter o in the final part of the word. The word autobiography only began to be used widely around the year 1800, and it was considered a little snobby or pretentious by some writers at the time. Now that it is a common and frequently used word, it is useful to get it right. The TU Libraries own several dozen autobiographies by noted people. Some of them use the title My Autobigraphy, although there is no need to specify whose autobiography it is, since every autobiography must be written by oneself. To spell autobiography correctly, it can help to remember a little about word origins. The word is derived from three Greek terms, autos meaning self and bios meaning life and graphein, to write. So, an autobiography is something written by oneself, about one’s life. Most students and ajarns have an idea about this, since only rarely is the word biography spelled wrong as biogrophy in Thai English. That is because we remember that the letters graph have to do with writing, as we can see in the many terms using them:

angiocardiography

angiography

aortography

arteriography

astrophotograph

autograph

autoradiograph

bibliography

biogeography

biography

calligraphy

cardiography

cartography

choreography

chromolithography

cinematography

cosmography

cryptography

crystallography

demography

discography

echocardiography

electrocardiography

electroencephalograph

epigraph

ethnography

filmography

geography

hagiography

historiography

iconography

lexicography

lithograph

oceanography

orthography

paleogeography

phonograph

photograph

photomicrograph

polygraph

seismograph

spectrograph

stenography

telegraph

topography

videography

zoogeography

If we recall just a few of this list of words with the letters graph – and there are many others not mentioned here – then it is unlikely that we will ever spell the words biography or autobiography with the letters groph by mistake. The other parts of the word are more obvious for Thai writers of English, since everyone knows that the letters auto, as in such words as autopilot or automobile, refer to things that act by or upon themselves. We all also know that the letters bio refer to life in such familiar words as biology, biotechnology, biodegradable, or biostatistics. So if we conquer the challenge of the graph part of the word, the spelling mistakes should be resolved. Some usage examples:

• The Nation will serialise the autobiography of Dhanin Chearavanont, chairman and CEO of Charoen Pokphand Group, over 30 weekdays.
• Sirin Phathanothai, author of the best-selling autobiography “The Dragon’s Pearl”, was back in Beijing last week, attending the launch of a new Chinese TV series that covers the times and politics of her childhood and adolescence in the country.
• In Bangkok last week for a press conference ahead of the release of a Thai version of her autobiography, North Korean defector Hyeonseo Lee shared the one thing that was, for many long years, wrong with her new life in the South of the divided peninsula.
• The film’s director Ittisoontorn Vichailak based the story on Luang Pradit’s autobiography, switching back and forth between the life Sorn led as a young man and his later years.

Please note that some online sources claim that apart from the fact that it is written by oneself, an autobiography differs from a biography in that the former is just written from memory, while the latter must be researched. This is not true. Memoirs or autobiographies may also be researched, and are usually better if they are the result of double-checking dates and other facts.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)