When I was learning to read German, for the longest time I thought the word “letztendlich” was “letz-tendlich” (which is meaningless but at least theoretically pronounceable) rather than “letzt-endlich” (which is what it actually is).
I’m sure a native German speaker wouldn’t make the same mistake, though.
The century old tradition has set up a couple rakes for native speakers to step into.
"Selbständig" (freelancing) is obviously derived like self-standing, but "selb" is archaic and completely unused, prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong.
Couple more ones like this. Ask a native speaker about hinüber vs herüber, they will be perplexed, because it feels so dialectal. And nobody even knows about imperfect tense vs perfect tense, it's just stylistics to most.
> prompting native learners to write 'selbstständig, which is wrong.
Not anymore: