People who know me well will know that I am a bit of a sports junkie. As in, I am the kind of person who will be happy to put ESPN on in the background, and I am someone who follows a wide variety of sports - football, tennis, basketball, golf, and even more random ones like table tennis and badminton. ESPN has been extending their coverage to such non-traditional sports as pool, snooker, bowling and darts (all of which I must admit I do rather enjoy watching as a kind of guilty pleasure), but even I was taken aback when I turned on the TV the other evening to be confronted with the ultimate clash of the titans, 48 individuals battling it out for the ultimate grand prize: the US National Spelling Bee trophy.
Traditionalists ("It ain't a sport unless you sweat while doing it") will laugh, but there was something rather captivating about seeing 13 and 14 year olds (some as young as 9) puzzling out words which were, quite honestly baffling, even to those who believe they have a considerable grasp of the English language. That spelling is a competitive sport, as unlikely as that might sound, was soon evident from the contestants.
Many of them were familiar with Latin and Greek root and derivatives, better to ensure not being caught out by tricky words; a number of them were making their second, third or even fourth appearance at the National Spelling Bee, with previous experience seen as a bonus (is experience a key factor, well just ask any golfer or tennis player yet to win a major). Nerves were evident, unsurprising given the one mistake and you're out see you next year format of the competition. It was often tension filled and pressure packed - there was even a psychologist on hand to counsel the distressed, some visibly distraught after they were literally "rung out" by the dreaded bell, signifying they had made a misstep puzzling out some fiendish word or another.
Just how difficult was it? I am not a great speller, laziness and Microsoft Word spellcheck has seen to that, but I do think I have a fair vocabulary. By the third and fourth elimination rounds (when the difficulty was increased) I would have probably gotten between a third to a half of the words wrong. This put me just about par for the competition as a whole. No doubt, these were 13 and 14 year olds, so I should feel ashamed at my ignorance, but in my defense, some of the contestants admitted to more or less sleeping with a Miriam-Webster by their bedsides, and spending arduous amounts of preparation in advance of the competition.
That said, I have kept a little notebook which I have filled with puzzling and interesting words that I had not previously come across. I have always meant to check out their meanings and etymologies, if only to expand my vocabulary. I have also meant to get to the roots of language, literally and metaphorically, to actually learn the building blocks (what is an adverb, what on earth is a past participle?) of grammar. Perhaps watching the US National Spelling Bee will inspire me to renew my efforts in this.
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i admit to finding word derivatives and origins an interesting topic too, but i prefer learning it organically through picking up info from various places and at random times, rather than deliberately going out to learn them. i find if you give me a list i'll forget it all soon enough but if you have it pop up in some random comedy show i'll remember it for life. like floccinoccinihilipilification :)
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