Nation Spelling Bee

[cactuswatcher]

So after all these years, the winning word was not only one I'd heard of, but can spell. Ursprache! Okay, like a good German student I always spell it with a capital U. Of course that's the joke. The National spelling bee isn't about spelling standard English words. It's about spelling godawful jargon, modern foreign words that a select few use as if they were English, and obscure pseudo-Greek and pseudo-Latin terms that have been stuck into English over the centuries by folks who though those languages were cool.

It would be nice if English had phonetic spelling so that spelling bees would be a thing of the past. That isn't practical because the way we speak English isn't uniform around the world. But, I do wish that these big contests would be more honest in saying that what they are testing for gets very far from English, at times.

Comments

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. The word that the Canadian girl who came second missed isn't English, it's German! Of course, I don't know the rules for the Bee, perhaps it's not limited to the English language per se...

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

It's supposed to be all English, but it's a rare word in the late rounds that everyone would agree is English!

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I say potato and you say pomme de terre... Er, wait a minute. That's not how it goes!!!

;o)

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

*giggles*