RelevANCE,ReferENCE,UtterANCE,PersistENCE etc.

Sorry, only by experience and by dictionary

Uhh OK,then.Thanks

Sorry, Super Sonic, because this is one type of error that I (native speaker) make ALL THE TIME. If it weren't for spellcheck on my word processor, I'd be wrong more often than not, I think. And the "problem" with spellcheck is that it never makes me have to go to the dictionary to look it up, so it's never really impressed on my memory.

It's no better with the -ent/-ant ending. Dependan

No kidding, GG. Spelling is the bane of my life. Lol. I usually manage to misspell a quarter of most of my essays.

If you know Latin or Italian they will give you some guide, but this is not perfect, because in French I believe a lot of such words use the "a", not the "e", and this often determines the English. So persistenza (Italian) gives us persistence in English, but resistenza gives us resistance in French and the same in English. Not really much help!

J LewisIf you know Latin or Italian they will give you some guide, but this is not perfect, because in French I believe a lot of such words use the "a", not the "e", and this often determines the English. So persistenza (Italian) gives us persistence in English, but resistenza gives us resistance in French and the same in English. Not really mu

J LewisIf you know Latin or Italian they will give you some guide, but this is not perfect, because in French I believe a lot of such words use the "a", not the "e", and this often determines the English. So persistenza (Italian) gives us persistence in English, but resistenza gives us resistance in French and the same in English. Not really

Thanks all.It seems that I will have to trust my mental dictionary:)

I read somewhere that even knowing which conjugation the related Latin verb is in does no good at predicting the ending in English.

CJ