Spelling Championship

Samir Mishra, a 13 year old boy of Indian origin won the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee in USA. The final word he spelled correctly was "guerdon" - which means 'something that has different language roots'.

The 3rd place winner spelled 'opificer' correctly - a word which means a skilled or artistic worker, it seems. In 2005, another Indian boy won by spelling correctly the word 'appoggiatura'.

How young children know the meaning and spelling of such greek and latin, I wonder. And, there was one boy who can tell a region name in Bolivia - and, he is just eight years old !


I compare myself with these superkids. Even after discounting that I belonged to stone age, they are too much. The longest word we had to remember the spelling was 'geography' or 'pronunciation' or something like that.

Tamil, of course, is phonetic and spelling is not that much of an issue. Even though we have our own share of confusions. We have three 'la's, (ழ ல and ள) three 'na's (ந ண and ன) and two 'ra's (ற and ர). My schoolmate Krishna Prakash used to say, "I will have a doubt which 'la' to put, my mother will pinch me so hard and tell me, 'the la that will come for laddu'. But, in that pain, I will forget which is the la for laddu !"

For our modern VJs and DJs, these distinctions are immaterial. They have only only la - the laddu la.

To complete, came across a nice poster on spelling mistake !


Sea Yu Nest Weak !