“Due ewe sea watt eye dew - oar knot?”
“So, ewe sea, aye reed watt yew rite.”
I get some funny mail sometimes. The two sentences above were in a note I got from a reader a few weeks ago. In his note, he said, “I have a big problem with the English language. How you can defend it, I don’t understand. Think about all the strange spellings it has.”
Then he inserted the two sentences above and said, “See why I hated English and spelling in St. Pete’s back in the ’30s and ’40s?”
Well, yeah, Dick, I can see why you might have gotten discouraged with the complexities of our language when you were a kid. But your little spoof makes me think you don’t really dislike the language; you obviously see it as a challenge.
Ironically, I got Dick’s note the day before there was a big article in the State Journal about the citywide spelling bee in Madison. Think about the spelling challenges some of those kids face in their quest to become city champs.
The girl who finished second, a 14-year-old eighth-grader, had not misspelled a word in the contest in four years! And those contestants don’t get everyday run-of-the-mill words, either.
In the 2012 national spelling bee, Gifton Wright placed sixth after misspelling the word ericeticolous. Nicholas Rushlow and Lena Greenberg tied for the fourth place. Nicholas misspelled vetiver and Lena misspelled geistlich. Arvind Mahankali, who placed third for the second time, misspelled schwannoma. Stuti Mishra, placed second when she misspelled the word schwarmerei. Snigdha Nandipati, who placed first, correctly spelled schwarmerei and then correctly spelled guetapens correctly to win!
I always think I have a pretty good vocabulary, but I humbly admit I don’t know any of those words. And I knew only one of the last 30 words in the championship round: quattrocentro. I knew that only because I looked it up once when I was reading a book (probably a Dan Brown novel). The cultural and artistic events of 15th century Italy are collectively referred to as the Quattrocento.
How would you do with some of the words on this list — psammon, dedans, sahel, harengiform, canities, ridotto, maieutic, turnverein, otosteon, ajimez, porwigle, melopoeia, phthisiology, distelfink, rouille, yttriferous, luteovirescent, saccharolytic?
Well, you get the idea, right?
I love to watch the spelling bee on television. I suppose some people might think it would be a little dull, but I’m always amazed at the way the kids attack their words.
At the spelling bee, a speller is given 2 minutes and 30 seconds from when a word is first pronounced to spell a word in its entirety. The first 2 minutes are known as “Regular Time,” the final 30 seconds, “Finish Time.”
During this time limit, a speller is allowed to ask the pronouncer for the following information: 1.) The definition of the word; 2.) The word’s part of speech; 3.) The word’s usage in a sentence; 4.) The word’s language(s) of origin (not the complete etymology, even though some spellers refer to the language(s) of origin as the etymology); 5.) Alternate pronunciations of the word; 6.) Alternate definitions of the word; and 7.) Whether or not the word contains a specified root. This may only be asked providing the speller can state the root in question, the root’s language of origin and the root’s definition.
Suppose you’re in the finals, and the pronouncer gives you yttriferous. Would any of the above prompts give you an idea about how to spell the word? If I told you it means “containing or yielding yttrium,” would that help? Would it help if I told you yttrium is contained in moon rocks?
My reader was having some fun with homophones, and we have lots of them in the language, but even if he says he hates the language, I don’t think he does.
“Dew whee sea eye two aye, Dick?”
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