Well, bureaucracy is half French and half Greek. Bureau being the French word for "desk", imported into English to refer to the metaphorical desk. The "-cracy" part is from -κρατίᾱ, a derivative of κράτος (power) which ends up denoting a form of rule (see also autocracy, plutocracy, democracy; all of these purely Greek).

The key to good English spelling is the meticulous study of etymology; I learned this when I was about five years of age. Once you get used to thinking about words in terms of their root languages, then things start to make sense most of the time, except for all the exceptions.

"The key to good English spelling is the meticulous study of etymology"

I'd argue it's the key to good understanding and use of any language

From a spelling point of view there are certainly exceptions. Bahasa Indonesia and its Malaysian cousin involve a remarkable amount of words borrowed English, but it doesn't show in the phonetic orthography

Yes, but "thier" problem is not that they aren't "mispelling", it's that they can't remember the character at all. It would be the equivalent of missing a stroke in a chinese character - if my minimal experience from Japanese is any guide, people would still be able to roughly figure out which character it was, but it would be considered a bit crude. That's where incorrect spelling is in english.

They're not talking about that, they're saying "We can't remember how the word looks at all". It's pretty neat as a problem to have, to be able to say it but not even have an idea about how it might be spelled.

"Not one of them could correctly produce the character." is slightly different from "We can't remember how the word looks at all". I would assume they know it's spelled with the 口 radical, but they might get the details of 疐 wrong.

FWIW, I could write it correctly, but I also spend 40 minutes per day practicing vocabulary, the bulk of which is spent on writing the characters.

> it's that they can't remember the character at all

I can guarantee you that each of those students would recognise the character if they saw it, they just can't generate it correctly from scratch.