Why can't Americans read/spell/speak well?
454432
As a preservice teacher (college student) and educator for many years that answer is simple. A LOUSY grade school education and a couch potato TV existence. For some moron reason the trend-favored method now is not to help students with the answer but let them reason it out by themselves. Well if that is the case then I guess I should just shoot myself and let the kids do their logical reasoning at home. Guess with that logic they don't need me to work anymore. Secondly the trend is to not to teach the fudamentals of grammer. Kids come out of high school with no clue as to what a noun and a verb are. Without the fundamentals of grammer a student is going to have trouble spelling, writing ect. \n\nA third trouble that people scream about is that education would be greatly improved if the funding improved because they need this and that supply ect. Well if my grandmother could teach children in the 50's to read and write properly with only pencil and paper at hand and no money for supplies then so can we in the new millinium.
20828
Because Americans are poorly educated when it comes to cultural matters
441277
Because Americans are stupid
600443
As pretty513 has just confirmed - many Americans are quite dumb. I have no idea whether this is the fault of the education system. The UK's education system isn't great at the moment, but I came through it being able to spell and use correct grammar. Going by the spelling and grammar of many of the Americans on here, I think their education has failed them somewhat.
84029
Ok, this isn't a very good place to make a judgment on how well people can spell. \nFor one, there is a wide age range here. I have seen children as young as 11 here, so obviously they are more apt to make a mistake.\nSecondly, people make typos all the time.  This is an informal setting so they are not as likely to spend a lot of time correcting mistakes, as say they would be when composing a buisness letter.\nThirdly, how do you know who speaks English as their first language, and who doesn't just by reading the question.  I don't think that you can possibly know that.\n\nIf they had this same type thing set up in Spanish speaking countries, or German, Or whatever language, I think you would find just as many people making errors in their own language too.  I think it is a little unfair to single out Americans when I doubt you are actually comparing this evenly with everyone else.\n\nThat all said, it does bother me when there are excessive amounts of misspellings.  A typo here or there, I can understand, but some I've seen are ridiculous.
63388
English is not easy.  It is one of the hardest languages in the world to speak, read and write.  American English is even worse than Brittish English.
443645
People are lazy and indifferent. Chatrooms certainly don't help.\n\nI'm from England, and I think it's ridiculous that I'm tested on English by a bunch of Americans (the SAT, the Regents, the GRE). I'm also sick of professors correcting me when I spell "defence" with a "c" or "speciality" with an "i."\n\nThose words are SUPPOSED to be spelled that way, you dumb college professors!\n\nI don't have a problem with Americans spelling "speciality" without an "i" or "colour" without a "u," but don't expect me to do the same.
103306
I think some must be speakers of another language and their english is the second or third language they speak.  Because alot of times it is not just spelling  errors but every other grammatical faus pax you can commit.
1114399
I'm extremely surprised by that too, and English is not even my native language. I don't know who's to blame for that, I guess that  everything you mentioned has an influence, but in my opinion the main reason for incorrect spelling is that people don't read as much as they should and therefore they don't get used to the correct forms of the written words.
842901
Watch a lot of American TV, especially news programs, since they are some of the very few on TV who still speak correctly.\n\nAnd stop posting this so many times!
206053
The lack of the ability to speak the English language sufficiently.
683178
Maybe you should learn to speak, read AND write PROPER ENGLISH, the language spoken in the USA!!!!!!!
1184215
Because Americans are stupid...
30465
No offense taken, from someone just as curious.\nAmericans make a lot of mistakes period, spelling and otherwise.  But ours is an experimental society.  Sure we speak English, but not like the English do.  We pronounce words differently and we spell some of them differently too.  Gray, not grey; check, not cheque; color, not colour.  We also change our spellings over time: it is now sulfur not sulphur, so why not fone instead of phone?  Or do we all have to call it a telephone all of the time?\n\nAmerican English is also one of the most complicated languages.  We tend to borrow more words and phrases than any other language and we also tend to make up new words for the rest of the world to use.  Television, transistor, vulcanization, teflon.  The list is a long one.  In addition, we have some of the strangest idioms, because we come from all over the world.  Many Americans speak English as a second language.  We are very diverse.\n\nThis is not a matter of a failure in education.  Sometimes the professional educator is too conservative for young modern minds.  And remember that until the advent of the press and the first dictionaries published by linguists, spelling was not taught as a subject.  Everyone spelled as they wished, and often used different spellings for the same word used more than once in the same document.\nAmericans were the first to even attempt to teach spelling to all of their citizens on a mass scale.  No other country can make that claim, not with numbers of students as large.  Is it any wonder that some of these do not spell well?\nWhat is more confusing is that we tend to type like we think except that we do not type very well.  The more excited we get, the worse the mistakes and many do not bother to check what was written.\n\nAs a final note it was also the Americans who developed the first spell checker programs (going back to the days of the CP/M operating systems in the late 1970’s).  Not bad for a pack of mongrels, semi-educated and with no cultural roots.  Ah, did I mispel anything?
275757
u r right.... American students are weak in math and chemistry, they cant spell things right and their writing is wormy.\nEnglish system gives the students more confidence through a well designed program.... Amercan educ should restablish it self again
508370
It's just going to take practice. We also use a lot of slang terms....contracations...which makes our language flow.It's just like any language...it will just taks time...and a few americans to speak with.
1056175
I've asked this question.  Most people just don't care about their spelling, and they claim to be in too much of a hurry to use Spell Check.  They are idiots.