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Hippo is a long word, how do you spell it with two letters?

Two students were sitting on the playground. One said to the other: “Hippo is a long word. How do you spell with two letters?” The other said, “I don’t know.” The first one said “THAT”.

This is an old joke that I remember from school days. It is a twist in the use of the English language. Did you get it? The way to spell the word IT is with the letter I and T. The first part of the sentence about hippopotamus is, as we say in Australian, a Furphy (pronounced ferfee). In other words, it has nothing to do with the real issue.

Why did this joke come up? It was because Hippo is a very long word and can be difficult to spell. If you look at it, you might see a hippo in your mind. Why did I use the word hippo? We have a tendency to shorten words when they are too long to say or spell. Everyone knows that a hippo and a hippo are the same.

So how can you remember how to spell hippo? Well, the way they taught me long words in school was through rhyme. Rhyme is used to help us flow through the different letters simply by remembering the first letter. The rhyme they taught me was to follow a melody for the lyrics. So he effectively sang the lyrics as if he were singing a song.

The downside to learning this way is that now I can only remember how to spell using rhyme. Also, I can’t spell the word backwards because I’ve linked the letters to the sound instead of representing the actual letters. If I use my spelling technique, then I can learn the word and spell it forward, backward, and even from the middle. This means that I can see the letters and spell the word instead of singing it and still not be able to spell the word.

By the way … do you want to learn to spell to have the confidence in your life to learn and develop? Download a free chapter of my ebook: 9 steps to improve spelling on my website.

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