We shall come back to the title later.
A small story follows -
Place : XYZ school, First standard classroom.
Teacher to Ram - "Ram, how do you spell Bee?"
Ram - "B".
Teacher - "No, I am not asking about the alphabet B, I am asking about the insect?"
Ram - "It is B, teacher".
Teacher - "That’s wrong. Shyam, can you give me the correct spelling?"
Shyam - "It is B-E-E teacher."
Teacher - "Ram, see that’s the correct spelling. B-E-E. Not just B".
And 5 years later, Shyam won the National Spelling Bee[1] contest and 20 years later, Ram became the creator of the ultra cool "Internet Chat Slang version 2.0", which was a huge hit. People were using it more than the usual English words. SMSes, IMs, Mails they all used the ICSv2.0.
Well, this is the story that happens in every classroom. Poor students like Ram don't really understand why the spellings of words had to be so complex, without much relation between the arrangement of the alphabets and the way they sound :(. Why do we need the extra two 'e's when a single B would do. And his teacher had no answer either.
Neither do I.
It seems so weird to me, leave the formation/creation of spellings, but contests like the National Spelling Bees. Kids of the age 8 start participating in the contest and continue participating for a good five years, before they win. And at the age of eight, the kid is supposed to know the spellings of the zillions of words present in the English dictionaries, their meanings, their language of origin etc, etc. How can it be? What do these guys do? Start memorizing the dictionary at the age of five? What would YOU prefer doing at the age of five, running your toy-train and making faces at the neighbor kid whose train runs faster or try by-hearting the spellings of words similar to the title - yeah, I know you read the word twice to actually pronounce it. ( If you didn't, you should have participated in the Spelling Bee ;) ).
And I thought the winners of these competitions will eventually idolize Shakespeare and be some kind of a linguist or writer or a judge at the Spelling Bee competition :). But this dude, who was into the final rounds of the contest I have seen, wanted to become a physician. Imagine a physician taking time to spell each medicine in the prescription correctly. Did you ever see that? We all know how well a prescription is written, only to be understood by the pharmacist. :)
The point is, what is the point in Spelling Bees, or what is the point in spelling 'scissors' that way? Wouldn't sizars be easier?
Then, I came across this article. See, I am not alone in thinking so. :)
For the readers who have waited so long to know what the title actually meant, it means 'holy light' . :) This was one of the words asked in the final rounds of this year's Spelling Bee competition in the United States.
National Spelling Bee : It is a contest where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words after listening to the pronunciation of the word.
3 comments:
This is a good piece, in a way restating the debated point of IQ vs EQ. Although its equally important to have both, for a person to Stand Out in the public, unfortunately, EQ is given less preference over IQ. Creativity gets the rewards in the long run, after surpassing all possible difficulties to get their talent acknowledged by others(Certified as they say…), probably when the element ‘Luck’ favors. Otherwise we have people with loads of creativity, yet go unseen in the crowd!
One would never think on the point as to “Why the apple fell in the downward direction ?” but would just relish, now that it has how ever fallen in your hands , if not for Newton who questioned it !
One should know whether he wants to be a Human or a Programmed Robot!
> "why do we need the extra two 'e's when a single b would do"
we need the extra two e's to differentiate between 'be' and 'bee'. well, it could be 'b' and 'bi' instead, but you know what i mean, right?
it's just one of those things that you leave as is, till a lot of disdain is developed in a majority of the people. at that point, we would have to change the entire language to english v2.0!! seriously, in your opinion, do you think it is worthwhile to change all spellings so that they are spelt as close to the phonetic pronunciation as possible? that would be a scary proposition to me!!
now the other part of the discussion - i don't think it's the five year olds themselves who choose to do this on their own. it is most conceivably the parents and, to a lesser extent, maybe teachers. if you ask me, i find nothing wrong with it - it's just another field where one can try and excel. (am i going to raise my kids to be national spellers?? nooooo waaaaaaay. i'm gonna raise them on ics v3.0)
also, a kid saying that he wants to become a physician holds no real weight. think of all the lovely professions that you wanted to pursue when you were back in school. not as a 10 year old, but even as a 15 year old. and look at yourself now - is there even a remote resemblance anywhere?? :)
no - scissors is better than sizars . . . . . atleast for the time-being. the motivation behind conducting the spelling bee is similar to the motivation behind conducting any other mental (and physical) contests - what about under 13 chess?? do the participants there not have to start playing chess from the age of 5 while their classmates are coming up with new ways of forcing their parents to buy surf excel?
and about the title, i thought it was some place in germany - like gelsenkirchen and kaiserslautern. you know where these names came from, don't you? sooooccccer baaaaaaaby - that's the other thing which i'm gonna raise my kids on!!
he he.. that's the point. Why was the English language constructed to be so tough and confusing. :( [Be, Bee, Bi, Bii]
They could have done better if they hadn't stuck to the 26-letter alphabet. :)
A few more alphabets/sounds would have definitely helped the cause. Now if you call this enhancement English v2.0, I will be more than happy, although, as you have said, a completely new language is out of question at this point.
Now, the comparison between chess and the spelling bee wouldn't be so apt. At least chess involves the creative part of the brain - inventing strategies, estimating counter attacks, etc. What does spelling bee help inculcate? Memorizing and more memorizing? Now you can argue that the 'bee' also tests the 'guessing' capabilites of the kids. Guessing - educated, uneducated, random, etc. in whatever way. It would be more like "Is it B-E-E (or) B-E (or) B-I (or) B-I-E (or) B-E-I-E". Isn't it? until the poor kid is eliminated from the competition.
Yeah, soccer or not, the 'dictionaries' I mentioned don't just contain words belonging and native to the English language. They do contain words borrowed from the zillion languages/dialects of the world. This one may be related to soccer and the next one would be a taekwondo term. ;).
May be there are equal percentages of Rams and Shyams in the world, hence all kinds of competitions. Each one of them acting like feedback circuits, one feeding the other and vice versa, thus surviving. :)
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