What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old?
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For that and other obvious reasons, Scripps is unlikely to open the word list to include any and all nonsensical jargon.
What would you consider nonsensical jargon? Jargon is jargon because it makes sense to those in that particular profession (medicine in this instance) but not to those outside it. Jargon that doesn't make sense to those who are using it is just fiddle-faddle.
This is nonsensical.
It is a type of silicosis, and has been around since 1935.
> artificial long word
> coined by the president of the National Puzzlers' League as a synonym for the disease known as silicosis
Nonsensical.
Why would the latter follow the former? What does memorizing the words in an entire dictionary (not even the meanings, just the spelling of the words themselves) have to do with being a high-performing doctor, lawyer, etc.?
It may well be that the hyper-focus on rote memorization that the bee is known for now will lead to reduced outcomes. Rote memorization just isn't that important of a skill in modern society.
Commitment to a years-long slog of seemingly endless and pointless repetition and stressful competition? If that doesn’t scream doctor/lawyer I don’t know what does.
Some of his proposals never caught on though. I think I remember tung (instead of tongue) being one of the rejected ones.
The more French-influenced colour was more common in England, and obviously eventually did totally win out.
There are generally very similar stories for most “American” spellings.
Polish is weird like that.
It was a deliberate effort, not something that just happened.
car park -> parking lot, lot -> bunch, dustbin -> trashcan, punch-bag -> punching bag, sellotape -> scotch tape, cinema -> movies, post -> mail, trolley -> cart, queuing -> lining up.
See https://www.hp-lexicon.org/edits-changes-text-ps/ for more
I feel deceived.
On the other hand, reading French is easy. There is no such thing as the English -ough suffix.
Some examples:
- temps (time): the "p" and "s" are completely silent
- oignon (onion): pronounced as "ognon" (the "i" is silent)
- asseoir (sit down): pronounced as "assoir" (the "e" is silent)
- poids (weight): the "d" and "s" are silent. "poi" (pea) is also a word.
- most words ending on "ou" take an "s" in plural, e.g. "verrou" becomes "verrous", except for certain words like "hibou", which becomes "hiboux" in plural.
- the noun "dépôt" takes the "^" accent, yet its derived verb "déposer" does not.
Heh, as is the "g" as well. The best way to explain the pronunciation to English speakers is "say onion but with a French accent". The "g" is the most confusing part of the spelling to native English speakers as a "g" is never silent in English.
They all have their shortcomings, of course. Possibly the most universal one is that none of the ones that I'm aware of seen do a good job of capturing the word stress system in English pronunciation. By contrast, for all its failings, the the current orthography does encode clues that a very experienced speaker of the language can use to infer word stress with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Languages where a single country has a "majority stake in the cultural control" of a language tend to be able to pull off spelling reform (German, Chinese, etc.). Languages where this isn't the case (English, Portugese, French post-1900) find it a lot harder to gain the necessary consensus.
One theory is that it was confused with "Fanshawe". We aren't even _trying_ to write what it sounds like:
> So Festonhaw, which is the recorded shortening of Featherstonhaugh, was somehow garbled further to something like Fesnaw or Feshnaw [...then...] we can just say that the garbled Feshnaw sounded so similar to the preexisting surname Fanshawe, that people just conflated the two surnames in speech.
> But not in writing.
> We don't pronounce the -er suffix like we're French
Though interestingly you've kept that with "herb" - in British English, it has a hard H (but I'm not quite sure what you mean by the -er suffix - in my experience, it's the same in both. Did you mean -re?)
https://www.quora.com/How-did-the-surname-Featherstonhaugh-g...
It's not exclusively a British thing though - Connecticut and Poughkeepsie come to mind.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Dictation_of_the_Dutch_L...
A Plan for the Improvement
of English Spelling
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
>Finally, then, after some 20 years of orthography reform, we would have a logical, coherent spelling in use throughout the English-speaking world.
I guess it helps that a lot of those letters are being used in the way I'm used to in other languages.
"By year 15 or so, it would finally be possible to make use of the redundant leters "c", "y", and "x" -- by now just a memory in the minds of old dodderers -- to replace "ch", "sh", and "th" respectively."
So "x" is removed as redundant, and then reintroduced for "th".
Right. Rather than eliminating letters, I'd go the other direction, and add more letters to account for the the various digraphs.
I know we'll never be able to choose one, but any dialect would be fine to standardize on.
http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html
>Note 1: The authorship of this piece is in question. Although frequently posted on the internet as authored by Mark Twain, there are some claims that it is authored by M. J. Shields in a letter by him to the Economist. See http://www.ojohaven.com/fun/spelling.html.
And from there..
>I did, however, come across one error: the "Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling" that you attribute to Mark Twain is actually (IIRC) a few paragraphs out of a letter to The Economist, written by one M.J. Shields
A couple other sites mention the same thing but I didn't bother digging any further
The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.
There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f".. This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter.
In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible.
Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away.
By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v".
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl.
Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru.
Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.
I hope not, the complexity and overall size is its strength. Especially the widespread and mandatory use of its embedded "idiomatic usage" subset makes it a hell of a lot more fun than something regular, like Spanish.
English is great as is.
True dat. I was at a seminar given by a local to remain unnamed law firm and I spotted a spelling error in their handout. I mentioned it to one of the speakers on the way out, more as an ice breaker to start a conversation but received an icy response.
By dismissively using the jargon of a profession that most people overlook/look down on, you can often give the responsible person the suggestion in a way that doesn't attack their ego.
Most competitions (why is it a spelling bee and not a spelling competition?) seem to revolve around a specific skill that stands on its own, and it's rarely about retaining facts that are described in a book. Compared to a physical sport, it's as if you'd remember all the rules but then not play the game. Or compared to a sport like Go or Chess, there is no interaction with an opponent, there is no improvisation or strategy, just data.
Maybe it's an American thing, and it holds it's value because it's a tradition that was recently created (well, relatively recent). It's what most searches seem to suggest... (as well as it being the reason that I don't run in to a 'bee' in other countries)
This isn't too different from quiz shows, I guess, although information from those tend to be more applicable.
It's also probably a bit of an oversimplification to call it memorizing a dictionary, some of the learning strategy involves understanding the rules of multiple languages, their root words, word etymologies, etc.
I think it's less about the act and more about the competitors. You never really see spelling bees among 30+ or even 20+ contestants - because at that age nobody cares. But for teenagers or elementary schoolers, being able to demonstrate an above-excellent level of English comprehension is impressive precisely because of their lack of experience.
You could say this about every form of recreation, let alone competitive activity. You don't find it interesting, that's okay, different people enjoy different things.
The best spelling bee champs (the ones winning the big scholarships) are not just memorization machines, they have deep understanding of the etymology and structure of English words (which I happen to find very interesting).
If you set aside a few minutes to watch the Scripps spelling bee, you'll notice that the competitors ask about the etymology and usage of the word in a sentence. This information gives subtle clues (such as Greek or Latin roots) that a good speller can use to spell a word they've never seen before. That is an impressive feat, if you ask me!
I get that it can be interesting to some people but the scale of the whole thing (in the US) is what surprises me every time.
Then again, I also don't get reality TV or pageants. Maybe I'm not the target audience...
At the same time, being able to spell obscure words doesn't have a wide application like being able to run, cycle, drive or swim fast has. (but those probably have their limits as well - fast cycling/running is handy when you also want to be a bike courier or need to outrun a bear, but less useful when you have a day job as a painter).
I guess in the end the point I made also works against my instinct to express a dislike for arbitrary contest when I don't get the scale/following.
Having said that, being able to spell obscure words is likely to increase your vocabulary, which may be useful if you decide to become a writer. Frankly, that's probably more useful than learning how to throw horseshoes.
As for the long term effects, I do notice misspellings whether i want to or not. Sometimes it happens with syntax errors in code, too.
Never had any interest in spelling bees but I've done a huge amount of copyediting/editing so I'm very aware of mistakes (including misspellings) in writing generally.
It's been common forever, because “payed” follows the most common pattern of forming a past participle in English (“ad ‘-ed’”) and also fits the pronunciation people are familiar with from oral communication; it's been infecting more formal communication since automated spellchecking displaced much second-eye proofreading because it is actually a correct spelling of that verb form for certain—though less commonly encountered—meanings of “pay” (yes, the verb had different conjugations with the same pronunciation and different spelling for it's different meanings because English is just that way.)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/hung-or-hanged
As a sibling pointed out, what the spellcheck accepts is law, and those dictionaries have grown signifigantly.
Although, apparently "timber" is a less common variant of timbre: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/timbre
Whether the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock itself is not known accurately. However, the Puritans didn’t land at whatever became the Plymouth colony. The ones who landed were Separatists (the ones who left the Anglican Church) who called themselves the Pilgrims. The Puritans (ones who stayed in the church to purify it) did arrive in America, but later.
I thought it was pretty well established that the landing and colony was elsewhere (but somewhat nearby), but Plymouth Rock essentially became a tourist attraction attached to it by fable later.