[djtango]

As mentioned in another comment, English has its share of words like that too. For example I'm sure diarrhoea can catch people out.

And how many people drink an espresso every day and think it has an x in it.

I knew plenty of elite students who would make classic English blunders like "expresso" or "pacifically"

[ndsipa_pomu]

> how many people drink an espresso every day and think it has an x in it.

Arguably, "espresso" isn't an english word, but spelling it with an "x" as "expresso" isn't as incorrect as you may think. There's two main theories behind which word to use: "espresso" meaning to "press out" the coffee, or "expresso" meaning "expressly made for the customer" as it's quicker to make than a filter coffee. This is further confused by the Latin root being "exprimire" meaning "to press or squeeze out".

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/espresso-vs-expresso...

[labster]

Are those blunders or accents? From my point of view you spelled diarrhea incorrectly, unlike how our lord and savior Noah Webster taught us.

Maybe language is fine if it conveys the intended meaning.

[djtango]

Yes a rose by any other name would smell as sweet and well... diarrhoea is diarrhea

My point was addressing "tsinghua students..." and "Harvard students..." unless they were literary scholars or grammarians their wield of the language may be at the level of "educated" but still plenty fallible. I'm sure those of us who did any post grad would have met people who were smart in a given axis and otherwise very ordinary along the other axes.

[katbyte]

Except most people will get close enough for most other people to understand. English is rather flexible

Not ti mention spelling differences and even all the unique words in different English countries. Or within the uk

[djtango]

Well in other comments, native Chinese speakers brought up that when you forget how to write a character you just write a homonym and readers can guess by the context - which is how Chinese speech works anyway.

So it turns out that humans are rather flexible

[kseistrup]

Or even more classic English blunders, like not being able to choose correctly between e.g. “their”, “there”, or “they're”.