{"id":299,"date":"2010-06-09T07:01:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T05:01:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=299"},"modified":"2015-04-27T19:26:19","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:26:19","slug":"time-for-a-real-sporting-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/time-for-a-real-sporting-competition\/","title":{"rendered":"Time for a real sporting competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With the soccer World Cup approaching, much of the world is focused on athletic <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9ed9038\">prowess<\/span>. But wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if <b>intellectual achievements<\/b> were followed with as much passion? What if, instead of showing men <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9ed941f\">chasing<\/span> a ball, the television cameras showed a contest of mental skill?<\/p>\n<p>Exactly that happened last week, when American sports channel ESPN and the ABC network turned their attention to the <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9ed980a\">Scripps<\/span> National Spelling <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9ed9bee\">Bee<\/span>. Yes, hundreds of schoolchildren battled each other for hours on live national television for the title of <b>person best able to spell English words<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, <b>English really is that difficult<\/b> to spell. Its long history and <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9ed9fd7\">omnivorous<\/span> borrowings have led to a set of &#8220;rules&#8221; that are at least <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9eda3b9\">inconsistent<\/span> and at best <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9eda7a8\">inadequate<\/span>. This becomes more than <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edac2c\">apparent<\/span> during the contest.<\/p>\n<p>Each child stands up <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edaf76\">in turn<\/span> and is given a word to spell. He or she is allowed to ask for the word to be defined and used in a sentence. If the spelling is correct, the child <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edb397\">gets to<\/span> stay for another round; if it isn&#8217;t, he or she must leave the stage.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/video\/embed?id=10834193\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><b>The first few rounds<\/b> use common words or words with recognizable Latin or Greek roots. As the field of competitors thins, less frequent words with Anglo-Saxon roots appear, as do <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edbb32\">archaic<\/span> words and words borrowed from exotic languages. The final few kids are always very good, so finding a single winner among them requires <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edbf13\">a touch of<\/span> the absurd.<\/p>\n<p><b>This year&#8217;s winner<\/b> correctly spelled a word that is neither in current use nor really even an English word: <a title=\"Ludwig-type stromuhr, London, England, 1920-1940 (Sciencemuseum.org.uk)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemuseum.org.uk\/broughttolife\/objects\/display.aspx?id=6735&amp;image=1\" target=\"_blank\">Stromuhr<\/a>. It&#8217;s not in any of the dictionaries in our office, English or German, except for <i>Webster&#8217;s Third New International Dictionary<\/i>, the one the spelling bee judges use.<\/p>\n<p>Such contests were once the subject of an <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edc2fa\">animated<\/span> <a title=\"A Boy Named Charlie Brown (Wikipedia)\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/A_Boy_Named_Charlie_Brown\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Peanuts<\/i> cartoon<\/a>, but I prefer the parody done in <a title=\"Script from &quot;Hooked on Monkey Fonics&quot; (episode 3-13) (Southparkstuff.com)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.southparkstuff.com\/season_3\/episode_313\/epi313script\/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>South Park<\/i><\/a>. Three candidates are left, and it&#8217;s Kyle&#8217;s turn. His word is only slightly more <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edc6e3\">fictitious<\/span> than &#8220;stromuhr&#8221;.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><b>Mayor:<\/b> Now we have Kyle Broflovski. <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edcac9\">Here we go<\/span>. Krocsyldiphithic.<br \/><b>Kyle:<\/b> What?<br \/>\n<b>Mayor:<\/b> Krocsyldiphithic.<br \/><b>Kyle:<\/b> Definition?<br \/><b>Mayor:<\/b> Something which has a krocsyldiph-like <span id=\"tooltip551e1e9edceb3\">quality<\/span>.<br \/><b>Kyle:<\/b> Uh, could you use it in a sentence?<br \/><b>Mayor:<\/b> Certainly. &#8220;Krocsyldiphithic&#8221; is a hard word to spell.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Kyle is beaten by the other two candidates, who were home-schooled and thus better prepared. In real life, he would have been beaten by the children of immigrants. Eight of the last 12 winners \u2014 including 14-year-old <b>Anamika Veeramani<\/b>, who won this year \u2014 have been Indian-Americans.<\/p>\n<p>The first national spelling bee was held in 1925; since 1941, it&#8217;s been sponsored by the Scripps newspaper chain. The 273 candidates are chosen in local competitions sponsored by individual newspapers. The prizes are certainly worth the effort: <b>$30,000<\/b> in cash, $5,000 in scholarship money, and a set of dictionaries and encyclopedias.<\/p>\n<p>Numerous attempts have been made to reform English spelling. But why do so when spelling is such an exciting sport?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With the soccer World Cup approaching, much of the world is focused on athletic prowess. But wouldn&#8217;t it be nice if intellectual achievements were followed with as much passion? What if, instead of showing men chasing a ball, the television cameras showed a contest of mental skill? Exactly that happened last week, when American sports channel ESPN and the ABC <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/time-for-a-real-sporting-competition\/\">&#8230; >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[16,125],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299\/revisions\/1591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}