Last night I caught a few minutes of the National Spelling Bee contest on TV. Kid after kid tried to spell the most ridiculous words, stalling as they repeatedly asked for the definition, alternate pronunciations, etc. After the contest had ended, thirteen-year-old Evan O'Dorney, the contest winner, had this to say:
"My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together, and with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes—and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization."This wise kid seems to understand the futility of spelling bees- it is nothing more than rote memorization of the long tail (see figure below). What I mean is, spelling bees don’t test your intelligence, only your ability to memorize words that no one, even the memorizer, will ever use in daily conversation or even in their writing in graduate school. (OK- a word or two may appear on your SAT.) Honoring a kid as the best speller in America is like honoring a kid for being able to memorize the most digits in pi.
It’s sad we English speakers have a language that uses so many words that aren’t phonetically spelled and words brought in from every other language on the planet. Consider there are about 100,000 words in the French language, but 10 times as many in the English language! Countless hours are wasted by children (and those learning English as a second language) learning trivial spellings and rules like “
Don’t hear me wrong- I acknowledge there are some benefits to spelling bees in general, but our focus should be on the blue circle, not the red. I'd much rather my son put down the Webster and pick up his tennis racket any day.
On a related note: Kudos to Mozilla Firefox 2.0. They added spell-check functionality into the browser, so now when I'm editing my blog or Wikipedia in a textbox, I can easily correct my spelling mistakes just like I would using MS Word! (Ha! No need to memorize the spelling of seldom used words for me!)
Hey Frank,
ReplyDeleteI think you mean "i before e, except after c." And while I agree that spelling bees can go overboard, as a copy editor, I am appalled by the disintegration of our language, especially in the realm of spelling, and I wish more people cared to communicate effectively. To use your example, "accept" and "except" are two different words with different meanings, as are filet and fillet, palette and palate, compliment and complement, and I am daily amazed by people (like our magazine's writers) who cannot spell, and even by those who can spell somewhat but aren't even aware that they are using a different word altogether — they have reduced their ability to communicate effectively, especially in the written word. We need more guardians of the language, more people who can spell. If spelling bees encourage that, great! Those who can spell will be more effective communicators, and that is always a very good thing. I've been transcribing some journals from the nineteenth century, and I've been so impressed by the complete lack of misspellings. When did our language become so unimportant to us? Just for kicks, here are some words that have shown up in the text of our in-flight magazine (some you may think classify for the red area on your chart, but they should actually be in the blue, because if the average person can no longer understand the words in an in-flight magazine, we are all in trouble): bonhomie, milieu, pundit, denizen, bund, morass, paucity, ebullient, kibosh, fey, panache, cognoscenti, ephemera, flay, zeitgeist, and mordant.
Ethan is precious!
-Jamie Sides
Hello Jamie! In certain English-speaking Scandinavian countries it's "a before e", but I should have stuck to US rules. ;-) Thanks for your excellent critique. Becky is also appalled by the high frequency of spelling mistakes she finds in magazines and newspapers. I agree with most of what you said accept, I mean except, we should be putting our energies into teaching kids how to spell words that they'll actually use someday (a lot of energy). But leucoryx, otate, schiavone, ocotillo? Fagettaboutit.
ReplyDeleteOn the futility of spelling bees, as they've evolved today: I totally agree. However, I got close to winning one in grade school, but with more common words. Spelling has always been easy for me, and I'm quite annoyed when I read posts that contain spelling or grammar errors - there's just no excuse anymore.
ReplyDeleteThat graphic was the first 'aha!' explanation of the Long Tail that I've seen. Thanks!