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Thread: Spelling Bee

  1. #1
    Oldest join date recoveryone's Avatar
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    Spelling Bee

    I sat down lastlight and watch the Scripps Spelling bee in Beautiful HD. But watching those kids spell those word just made me think how messed up the so called English language is. We have stolen words from about every corner of the word but our own. I don't think I heard the reader say that one word was english in orgin.
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    Shostakovich fan Feanor's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by recoveryone
    I sat down lastlight and watch the Scripps Spelling bee in Beautiful HD. But watching those kids spell those word just made me think how messed up the so called English language is. We have stolen words from about every corner of the word but our own. I don't think I heard the reader say that one word was english in orgin.
    This "stealing" as you call it, is the reason why English has the richest vocabulary of any language in the world. This permits the erudite English speaker to present more nuances of meaning than is possible in other languages, (at least most of the time -- we don't have twenty-three or whatever it is words for 'snow' as does Inuit).

    Nor is this stealing anything new for English. It's been going on since the Norman Conquest or earlier. In any case, all living languages "steal".

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    Color me gone... Resident Loser's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by recoveryone
    I sat down lastlight and watch the Scripps Spelling bee in Beautiful HD. But watching those kids spell those word just made me think how messed up the so called English language is. We have stolen words from about every corner of the word but our own. I don't think I heard the reader say that one word was english in orgin.
    ...where would I even begin to rip that apart?...BTW stolen comes from the word steal whose etymology is Middle English from the Old English somewhat related to the Old High German circa the 11th or 12th century...Most romance languages i.e. Spanish, Italian come from the Latin, and then of course, comes the Greek, the source of many lingusitic roots...all of which have their basis in indo-european, which itself comes from proto-indo-european...

    In more erudite circles I'd refer you to the concept of the language tree, of which English is a branch...

    jimHJJ(...failing at that, a simple "duh" should suffice...)
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  4. #4
    Suspended markw's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Resident Loser
    ...where would I even begin to rip that apart?...BTW stolen comes from the word steal whose etymology is Middle English from the Old English somewhat related to the Old High German circa the 11th or 12th century...Most romance languages i.e. Spanish, Italian come from the Latin, and then of course, comes the Greek, the source of many lingusitic roots...all of which have their basis in indo-european, which itself comes from proto-indo-european...

    In more erudite circles I'd refer you to the concept of the language tree, of which English is a branch...

    jimHJJ(...failing at that, a simple "duh" should suffice...)
    Don't you know that the English language is the only language that borrowed from any other language? Every other language in the world it totally unique and shares no roots with any other language!

    At least that's what ignorant apologists would have you believe.

    http://www.bartleby.com/61/indoeuro.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_family

    It must be awful living with such tremendous self-imposed that guilt that some must look for new ways to feel responsible for the worlds ills?

  5. #5
    Oldest join date recoveryone's Avatar
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    What were you guys reading, My point was that our (English) has such a mix of varies languages that its hard to master. Which points out how others around the world have taught their children English from grade school along with their native tongue, and excel in academics But our kids don't normally get a chance to pick a second language until middle school. We get all impress when we meet a child from an another country who speaks 2-3 languages, but for them its normal. And for those who watch lastnight, you may have notice that good majority of the finalist where first generation Americas, parents foreign born. The kid that took second was from Canada.
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    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by recoveryone
    What were you guys reading, My point was that our (English) has such a mix of varies languages that its hard to master. Which points out how others around the world have taught their children English from grade school along with their native tongue, and excel in academics But our kids don't normally get a chance to pick a second language until middle school. We get all impress when we meet a child from an another country who speaks 2-3 languages, but for them its normal. And for those who watch lastnight, you may have notice that good majority of the finalist where first generation Americas, parents foreign born. The kid that took second was from Canada.
    When I took French in high school, what struck me was how much more consistent the pronunciations are with French and the other romance languages compared with English (at least the way that it's spoken in contemporary America). English is not an easy language to learn, not just because of how many different influences get thrown into the mix and the commonly accepted rules on language usage evolve so quickly (the U.S. does not have an official language ministry like the Academie Francaise to set the rules and decide what words are "official"), but also because we're constantly inventing new words and/or new metaphorical slang phrases.

    Just in California (or CalEEfornia as our Austrian-born governor says), the majority of the place names are Spanish origin, but the commonly accepted pronunciations are all over the map making for a rather perilous minefield for anyone coming here, whether from another country or another state. For example, San Diego and San Juan Batista uses the original Spanish language pronunciation (i.e., dee-AY-go and bah-TEE-stah), while places like San Pedro and San Rafael are completely Anglicanized (san PEE-droh and san reh-fell, rather than san PAY-droh and san rah-FI-el), and still others are more of a pick and choose option like Ignacio Valley (pronounced as either ig-NAY-sho or ig-NAH-SEE-oh).

    Just imagine the puzzled looks when ESL students hear or read "jump the shark" for the first time! Or even imagine someone from 12th Century England trying to converse with a 21st Century American! (Reading texts from Old English, it is almost like viewing a foreign language)

    With the spelling bee, I think a lot of that comes from the way that immigrant children frequently have to learn English in more a formal structured manner where they learn to speak the language concurrently with how to read and write in English. They don't pick it up intuitively at home because English might not be the primary language spoken.

    The winner of this year's spelling bee (who's from the Bay Area BTW) said that it's all memorization. And in the past, a lot of the spelling bee finalists were home schooled (as famously satirized in a South Park episode), again with immersive memorization.
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    I certainly agree with those who have mentioned the richness of the English language which has come from its ability to borrow words from other languages. There is a variety of reasons this has happened ranging from war, immigration, globalization and colonial imperialism. I do remember reading years ago that some scholars in (18th-19th century) hated the fact that english lacked structure and rules like so many of the romantic languages. Their solution was to try and "Latinize" it and this resulted in many of the spelling/grammatical issues that have lead to english being considered by many to be the most difficult language to learn.

    For those interested in such things Robert McNeil (McNeil/Lehrer Report) wrote a pretty interesting book a few years back called-I think- "The History of English" which I thought was a pretty good read. As many "Lord of the Rings" movie/book (Feanor??) fans who discuss topics here from time to time are aware many of the words/names that Tolkien used came from a variety of Old English-Nordic sources. When researching a paper in college I was somewhat startled that most of the names of the dwarves used in "The Hobbit" were lifted directly from an old saga.

    I did watch the last 15 minutes of the "Bee" and I actually found it entertaining to figure out how the words are spelled (but then I like Scrabble and crossword puzzles) but at times a little disconcerting. Some of those kids seem to really put alot of pressure on themselves and I could not help thinking that one day we are just going to see one of them literally explode on stage. I guess it is no different with some sports at that age but as a group these kids just seem to me to more visibly express the signs of pressure than kids playing sports.

    Wooch - As for the "Anglicanization" (Sp??) of Spanish words there is a related phenomena I often laugh at when watching occasional newscasts when I travel across the country. I have often witnessed a reporter of Latino descent doing a remote piece speaking in the usual sanitized/dialect free english that newspeople are trained to speak. They will even sometimes pronounce anglicanized place names but suddenly as they close the piece they pronounce their names (Ramon Martinez for example) in perfect native dialect. I would love to see other reporters start doing the same based on the pronounciation of their names in their country of national origin. Steve McDonald signs off with a lovely Scottish brogue, Lisa Kilpatrick a lilting Irish accent etc........

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    Did any of the kids have to try to spell a word from the "ebonics" variation of the English language?

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    Suspended PeruvianSkies's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rich-n-Texas
    Did any of the kids have to try to spell a word from the "ebonics" variation of the English language?
    yeah, I think a 10 year old from India had "biyotches".

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    Oldest join date recoveryone's Avatar
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    word orgin: english, from the pimp handbook in reference to ones Ho's or to refer to one as a weaker person.
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    Quote Originally Posted by recoveryone
    word orgin: english, from the pimp handbook in reference to ones Ho's or to refer to one as a weaker person.
    Oh!!! He just said the "H" word. You better hope the Reverend Al isn't reading this.

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