<p>Just got home from final band concert and .......the winner is.....Katharine Close! DS knew her from a previous BEE....can't wait to see the recording of toniqhts rounds!</p>
<p>I guessed right on maybe 3 words. The Hawaiian and Persian words really threw me for a loop! </p>
<p>All in all, the participants were quite impressive!</p>
<p>Fabulous! The kids were adorable, and I hated seeing each one eliminated. Kudos to Ms. Close and to ABC for televising it! </p>
<p>I only knew three words: douane (general knowledge), tutoyer (a "gimme" for anyone who's studied French), and poiesis (from the medical word hematopoiesis). I guessed weltschmerz correctly through a combination of a rudimentary knowledge of German and the medical term mittelschmerz. I'm a word junky (obviously!) but a rank amateur compared to these kids.</p>
<p>I didn't watch the whole thing but I DID like that NJ girl!</p>
<p>Was the Jonathan kid the same boy who whined about the word "banns" in the documentary spellbound? I thought it might be him a couple of years later.</p>
<p>No, motherdear, the boy in "Spellbound" was Harry Altman...who is now a student at University of Chicago.</p>
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Was the Jonathan kid the same boy who whined about the word "banns" in the documentary spellbound? I thought it might be him a couple of years later.
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<p>Jonathan is a 12-year-old 7th grader this year. </p>
<p>Spellbound was filmed at the 1999 bee, when Jonathan would have been about 5 years old! </p>
<p>(The record for youngest speller ever was an 8-year-old boy a few years ago.) </p>
<p>Time flies!</p>
<p>My school did not have spelling bees except when I was in 3rd grade (I won my school bee that year and got to the 3rd round of an 8 round regional bee - missed the word interference by inserting an 'a' between the e and r in the 3rd syllable - should have done better, but oh well). I've always had a talent for spelling words, and I got a lot of the words correct tonight (watching at home) including ursprache. However, there was still a good amount of words that I was WAY WAY off on. </p>
<p>I've seen "Spellbound" (actually, in my English class - we all tried to guess the spellings - a fun way to watch!) and after seeing all the hard work put into the bee, my hat goes off to all 297 who made the trip to D.C. for the nationals.</p>
<p>I liked all the kids. The Canadian gal spent most of the evening with a cute smile, while Katharine the winner spelled with more of a "game face." The words were incredibly hard. I knew koine and poiesis and guessed right on weltschmerz, but that was about it for me. I did, however, think it was a lucky break for the Canadian that she kept getting words of French origin - e.g. you see "douane" all over the place in every Canadian airport that has a Customs office.</p>
<p>I know that France has the national Dictee, which is rather a different concept, but do other countries besides Canada have big spelling bees? In German or Dutch or whatever?</p>
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but do other countries besides Canada have big spelling bees? In German or Dutch or whatever?
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<p>A friend from Spain was absolutely astonished at the whole notion of a "spelling bee" when he came to this country. Spanish is so phonetic that a spelling bee would be quite trivial.</p>
<p>What makes an English spelling bee so remarkably challenging is the incredibly rich and diverse sources of words assimilated into English from so many other languages.</p>
<p>I don't know for sure, but it would surprise me if other languages had spelling bees, because all the other alphabet-based languages I can think of are so much more regular in their spelling conventions than English.</p>
<p>(And in the non-alphabet-based languages, I don't know how you would do an oral spelling bee. I suppose you could have a calligraphy bee though!)</p>
<p>Until recently spelling bees were really a uniquely American phenomenon--even among English-speaking countries. They are pretty new in Canada and just a few years ago I remember hearing BBC reporters describe the spelling bee as one of those strange American idiosyncrasies!</p>
<p>I just have a quick question (my school didn't have a spelling bee).</p>
<p>Can you write the words down or do you just have to spell it outloud?</p>
<p>I am an excellent natural speller, but I always have to write it down -- somehow the visual is what helps me spell.</p>
<p>My kids and I just wondered about that.</p>
<p>"A friend from Spain was absolutely astonished at the whole notion of a "spelling bee" when he came to this country."</p>
<p>The same goes for the Russian-speaking person from Ukraine. :-)</p>
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<blockquote> <p>Can you write the words down or do you just have to spell it outloud?<<</p> </blockquote>
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<p>You must spell the word out loud -- no writing. In a spelling bee you must stand up there alone with no paper or writing implements. But some of the kids do a sort of phantom writing where they go through the motions of writing it out on their arms or hands to help them visualize the word they have "written."</p>
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<blockquote> <p>A friend from Spain was absolutely astonished at the whole notion of a "spelling bee" when he came to this country."</p> </blockquote>
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<p>The same goes for the Russian-speaking person from Ukraine<<</p>
<p>I find it hard to believe that Spanish or Russian speaking school kids never misspell words, or that all Spanish or Russian words are equally easy/difficult to spell. A spelling bee could still be a fun and useful competition if they ever thought to use it.</p>
<p>My nomination for a country that could use a good spelling bee would be Finland. Finnish words are very long. A page of English text usually runs at least 1.5 pages when translated into Finnish. And they have those extra vowels too.</p>
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I find it hard to believe that Spanish or Russian speaking school kids never misspell words, or that all Spanish or Russian words are equally easy/difficult to spell. A spelling bee could still be a fun and useful competition if they ever thought to use it.
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<p>I'm sure that students do misspell words (due to typos, if nothing else), but I don't think the Spanish dictionary is sufficiently challenging to support a really large-scale national competition. English has a much larger number of words than any other language and freely borrows from a huge number of sources, sometimes Anglicizing the spellings of borrowed words and sometimes not. The number of "exceptional oddball words" in English far exceeds those in any other language that I know of.</p>
<p>Finnish does have long words, but spelling principles are phonetic, and I would guess that there are a sufficiently large number of students with sufficient large-chunk short-term memory skills that a national Finnish spelling bee would result in lots of ties. (The main challenge in a Finnish oral spelling bee would be not to lose track of how many syllables you'd already spelled in the middle of a word!)</p>
<p>"I find it hard to believe that Spanish or Russian speaking school kids never misspell words, or that all Spanish or Russian words are equally easy/difficult to spell. A spelling bee could still be a fun and useful competition if they ever thought to use it."</p>
<p>I can't say anything about Spanish, but in Russian the concept of "spelling" is never applied. You learn the rules and these rules apply to the majority of words. Exceptions are learned too at a pretty early age. There is a number of "dictionary" words( nonconforming :-) ), but it's VERY limited, much too limited for any spelling bee. By 6th grade a good student( and spelling bee participants usually are good students) will have learned pretty much everything there is to know about writing words correctly. It wouldn't be a very exciting competition, believe me. :-)</p>
<p>Yay Katharine! I was rooting for her. She seemed very calm and cool up there. I always forget how obscure those words are, and knowing the etymology and prefixes/suffixes seems to be at least half the battle.</p>
<p>I was a former speller who won the school bee several times as well as the district private school bee, but alas, there was no sponsor in my area at the time, so I couldn't go on from there...</p>
<p>Spelling in french is devilish, even though the actual vocabulary is much more limited than in english. The grammar is very complex and for every rule you have many exceptions. Even though dictation is a standard staple for all french students until high school, very few can write a paragraph without making a mistake. One of the most popular programs on TV was a national dictation taken every week by millions of people. Nobody ever got it completely right, including professors and writers. I don't know of any language that comes even close to french in sheer complexity.</p>
<p>Hey everyone!!! I was in the 2003 National Spelling Bee. I even tied for 12th place. Yay!!!</p>
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cellardweller: I don't know of any language that comes even close to french in sheer complexity.
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<p>OMG!! Thank you! I took French for two years in college and then went for my senior year to a French university where more than half my classes were in French, with written papers and oral presentations. I thought it was just ME who found it so difficult! This makes me feel better, even if it is 20 years later! :)</p>