I just watched a 12 year old (correctly) spell omphaloskepsis, a word that google doesn't even recognise. And Google knows EVERYTHING!
There are few things in the world which leave me in more awe than the national spelling bee. There are few words to describe the skills these kids posses, and they are probably the only ones who can spell those words. These children are the pinacle of home school education in this country, and they represent the future generation of American recluses and hermits... Something we never really beat the Soviets at.
It looks like we are trying really hard.
This really comes down to a competition of who responds better to parental pressure. The collection of scenes from tonight's national spelling bee have ranged from adorable to terrifying &mdash From giggling at a word containing "doodle" to bursting into tears because they could not spell hernio-something.
Spelling is a bitch, and this is because English is the slut of world languages. A patchwork of Latin, French, Greek, German, and a cocktail of Norse dialects mean that phonetics operates on several different systems, and good luck figuring out which one is at work (this is why all the contestants ask for etimology). This is exacerbated by the tendency to pick up words willy-nilly from other languages, each working on their own transliteration system. A great example, emphaloskepsis is a portmanteau stolen from ancient Greek to describe eastern meditation.
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