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In my household I'm the English nerd, although I have no degree behind it. I'd correct my wife when she wrote "would of" but then I listened closer when she talked: She wasn't saying "would've" she was saying "would of".

That's when I gave up. There are a million other reasons to love my wife, and her proper use of 'would've' wasn't one of them to begin with :)

Does your wife actually pronounce these differently? Small sample size but as far as I can tell I pronounce these identically. (CA - native speaker)

She does not. They are the same to her. We're also native speakers from the Reno NV area, which is heavily influenced by Sacramento and San Francisco language.

əv

To me "would of" and "would've" are pronounced exactly the same.

If I said "would ev" that would sound weird. It would sound very similar to "whatev":

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=whatev

Well, nothing else in english is pronounced like it is written, so I don't think this is a good reason to misspell things.

Reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti

I agree completely. No one should write "would of".