Monday, June 24, 2019

To Bee or not to Bee



     Every year before June rolls around our country holds statewide spelling contests with Semantics students in every participating city in the U.S. I found out that this was the 79th year of Colorado’s participation in the competition. A regional competition was held at D.U.s Sturm Hall back on March 16th. Only the best spellers of these state contests make it through the preliminaries to compete in Washington, D.C. each year so those who made it to the 94th annual National Spelling Bee (567 in all) are quite adept in perfect spelling. Four of ours were Maria Ciobanu, Bryson Browning, Cameron Keith from Boulder and Lauren Guo from Arvada. The last two are from suburban Denver and they made it to Washington, D.C. but were eliminated after passing the first round.  
     I’m sure many people think of spelling contests as a superfluous or even superficial intellectual competition and that their time could be better spent but I totally disagree with that opinion, however much it may prevail. Let’s just say that I happen to believe that anyone who understands the importance of great spelling will transfer that love of perfection and conscientious work to their lives in the future.

     To expound on this, great spelling could be eventually transferred to the quest to find a cure for all cancer, and comprehensive programs for gun control, eliminating world hunger and disease prevention. My vision is not grandiose but it is full of hope and possibilities- which are endless. So I feel that the Bee deserves our rapt attention and support.
     On the morning of Thursday, May 30th almost all of a total twenty rounds had came down to the remaining sixteen 12 to 14 year old kids. The Scripps-Howard Bee is a competition which employs extremely obscure or even foreign language words which have been adopted into the American English language. Some of our idiomatic spellings of English words trip up the average speller in the U.S. so the difficulties are often profound. Our National Spelling competition is open internationally so this year it started with 11 million applicants! Many of the top spellers come from families in which it is possible that English may not be their primary language but it appears that this is not an inhibiting factor to their scholarship. This was the case for last year’s sole winner of the Bee, Karthik Nemmani.

     Having been a Semantics student myself at a time when this course was taken for a period of two years (four semesters) at Junior High level (now Middle School and the Freshman year of High School). I have been a fan of watching these bees for the sheer enjoyment of it, believe it or not. When I was that age and studying the origins of words along with the rest of the Semantics students, we culled our subject directly from the current dictionaries published at the time. I was discouraged away from using the Funk and Wagnall’s and American Heritage Dictionary by my instructor but still prefer them to this day. However, we were encouraged to own as many different types of dictionaries as possible. Availability, especially foreign language dictionaries, was limited. Internet access has made many foreign languages much more easily available. My most recent purchase from the internet was a tiny guide on the Hawaiian language and is very good for showing how easy it is to learn! Promise!
      At any rate, I watched the 20th and last round of the finals this year and the coordinators of the session ran out of time and words! It was scheduled locally, for me, on ESPN and was only supposed to run for two hours and it recorded for another half hour but that was not the end of the competition. It certainly wasn’t time sufficient enough to cover the viewing clear up to the end! Because they also ran out of words that were planned we had a decision which included multiple winners of the Bee. Eight competitors wound up winning the bee, simultaneously, each garnering a trophy and $50,000! As far as I know, this was a first multiple win in its 94 year history!



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