Spelling is dear to my heart, since I came through the Calvert system,
where we learned rules from the third grade on.  But we never had the
Assimilation rule, which I learned around 1968 from a spelling workbook
I used in teaching 6th grade language arts.  My favorite!

Words formed with Latin prefixes ending in consonants (ad, ob, in, sub,
con, dis) but not ab (which is often a) or (ex, which is often e) and
not prefixes ending in vowels (like re and pre)  added to roots
beginning with consonants will assimilate the prefix by turning the
prefix consonant into another of the root's consonants. (See-- the name
illustrates the principle!)
affect, address, arrogant
occur, offer
surround, suffer
collect, commit
differ

You will never misspell occurrence (well, you have to know the doubling
rule too) or accommodate or immigrate or emigrate again!  I now teach
high school juniors, and they get a kick out of this, even the ones
who've never had any Latin (and they get more numerous every year...)
Just a quick mini-lesson and some vocabulary-building to boot.

Jane Saral
Westminster Schools
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