Scripps Spelling Bee not even all English?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Just noticed this article on the latest Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Again, National Spelling Bee ends in a tie, Washington Post, May 27, 2016.

The bee went on for many rounds of overtime before they finally declared a tie between the two remaining bee-people. (Beers?) I guess they get asked increasingly weird and outlandish words as the game progresses. (The article lists several.) What is the point of having contests where kids compete for a trophy for whoever can memorize the greatest number of the most obscure words in Webster’s Unabridged? Isn’t that kinda like all those ridiculous Guinness Records feats that people compete for?

And how many vocabularies, in how many different languages, might the competitors be tested on? Do they start with the foreign words once they start running out of English words? Does a foreign word become eligible if it’s commonly mentioned in mostly-English discussions? Example: Wehrmacht. Okay, we English speaking folks discuss World War II topics from time to time, and the Wehrmacht gets mentioned. Does that make the word English enough for an English spelling bee? Even my Firefox spell-checker doesn’t know Wehrmacht.

Okay then, what about gesellschaft? That’s English now? I’ve never heard or seen the word commonly enough that I’d think it should be in an English spelling bee.

What about words that are strictly trademarked proper nouns? Feldenkrais was mentioned. Would that fly in a Scrabble game according to the standard rules?

2

Another article about the bee in WaPo from May 25:

A 6-year-old charms the National Spelling Bee before getting eliminated

The first first-grader spelled inviscate but then blew it on bacteriolytic.

And how about chanoyu — a Japanese tea ceremony — How English is that?

3

I don’t think you quite understand how English works.

4

All the words come from* Webster’s Third New International Dictionary*. This article shows the breakdown by origin of “words that were used in the second round and beyond in 19 bees over the past couple of decades.”

Yes, winning (or tying) this spelling bee is an impressive feat. Competitors can ask for the origin of each word–which does help. Just reading–not under pressure on stage–I’d have no problem with the German words in the OP. “Bacteriolytic”? My high school Biology teacher drilled us on the Greek & Latin roots of most scientific words.

How do you define “English” words? The #1 source in the list is Latin; Middle English is only #2.

5

Beagle
B-E-A-G-E-L
Beagle

AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

6

OMG! :eek:

I lost out on my elementary school spelling be on THAT exact word back in the late 70s! Hahaha! Crazy!

7

Fussbudget.

8

The spelling bee would take all day if the words were easy to spell.

9

True dat.

Let’s face it, English might be the most protean language ever to develop. It borrows, steals and makes other language’s words its own. To English there’s no such thing as a foreign word…just words it hasn’t found a need to appropriate yet.

10

The point isn’t that you memorize obscure words. The point is that you know enough about etymology and linguistics that given a definition and a derivation, you can reason out what a word’s pedigree tells you about how it’s likely to be spelled. Like the vocabulary words used on the GRE, you’re not expected to know them but to reason them out.

11

“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” – James Nicoll, in a widely quoted Usenet post from about 26 years ago.

12

You beat me to it (and good job on correctly attributing this).

13

Mine: etymology

My Nana’s: tongue

14

One I saw a few years back in The Bee was some Ethiopian word I never heard of.

I’ve done a lot of crosswords over the years, so my vocabulary is presumably quite large. OTOH, it’s chump change to a spelling bee wiz. Even double my vocab is a joke to these people.

So, the organizers have to dig very, very deep to get obscure words. But they’ve really dug too far, IMHO. Not every word in some other language should be game here. We’ve got a lot of obscure words, no need to outsource the job. English is promiscuous, but not to this ridiculous degree.

Here’s a rule: If the definition says something like “It’s the Japanese word for …” then it’s not an English word.

(BTW: How does anyone specify the “correct” spelling in English of such words? Japanese and such to Latin letters is very problematical. Spelling is usually set by common usage. If there is no common usage …?)

15

So words like sushi, tsunami, and anime aren’t English?

Japanese has fairly consistent transliteration systems for English. Other languages are more problematic (especially Arabic.)

Anyway, as above, they use a particular dictionary as the official reference. Where words have multiple spellings, any spelling is considered correct as long as the dictionary identifies them as having the same definition and pronunciation.

16

Spelling Bees are one of the reasons the rest of us point and laugh at America.

17

Maybe, maybe not. The French have concours de dictée, or “dictation bees,” in which the contestants have to write out a speech as it’s read out to them. Given the number of silent letters, silent conjugations, silent gender agreements, accent marks, and homophones in the language, correctly writing a dictée can be quite difficult. And like the spelling bee, it’s a traditional exercise in French schools.

18

We are quite capable of laughing at the French as well: that tradition was known as The Gaiety of Nations.

19

No, no, yes. You can adequately define the first two without referencing Japan/Japanese. Not the second. This division also corresponds with the knowledge of these terms within the general US population.

20

So what kind of rule is there, or can there be, to decide if an imported word is English yet?

We can make an argument that tsunami and czar are English now – they are used in actual English (American anyway) to discuss things that exist or occur here. Those aquatic disturbances formerly called “tidal waves” do happen, from time to time, here and are now routinely called “tsunami”. We don’t use the word only to discuss big waves that hit Japan.

Likewise, czar: In this country, we have appointed officials with some delegated area of responsibility, and we’ve adopted the word for that: We have an energy czar, a drug czar, no doubt we’ll soon have local bathroom czars. We don’t use that word only for pre-Soviet kings any more.

But Wehrmacht? That was something in the German (specifically, Nazi) military. In America, we have no unit or branch in our military that we call Wehrmacht. We use that word only in its original German meaning, as far as I know. I don’t really buy that it’s English.

And gesellschaft? Where is that used in English, in a context that’s actually English? Is it ever used to refer to anything other than a German company? When American corporations begin be called gesellschaft, then I guess it’s English.

And:

Great education, that your high school Bio teacher taught you all that. We should all learn to be so literate. (Well, we of the Dope are, of course.) But that was a six-year old first-grader who got this word (and blew it)! And I’m not sure how many English-speakers should know gesellschaft (I do), but so what? What makes that English?

What about cherub? That’s a Hebrew word that’s well-integrated in English.

So what about mademoiselle or caballero? Are those English now? I’m sure they’re widely understood by English speakers. ( Caballero? Really? On both sides of the Pond? )