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United States News

Harini Logan Wins the National Spelling Bee After Blazing Through the Competition's First Spell-Off (nytimes.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Harini Logan won the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday night, claiming victory in a blistering, first-of-its-kind spell-off that capped a marathon duel of one arcane term after another. From a report: Harini, 14, an eighth grader from San Antonio, beat Vikram Raju, 12, a seventh grader from Denver, after she rattled off word after word in a 90-second speed round. Both students spelled so fast that the judges had to go to video to determine a winner: Harini spelled 21 words correctly, compared with 15 for Vikram. It was a tense victory that came after she was briefly eliminated and then reinstated earlier in the finals, when the judges decided that a definition she had given for the word pullulation was acceptable.

Harini, who was making her fourth and final eligible appearance in the Bee, said winning felt "so surreal." "This is just such a dream," she said, holding the trophy on national television. Vikram stood nearby with his family, visibly trembling and his head bowed with the high emotions of the three-hour contest. But when the Bee's host, LeVar Burton, asked Vikram if he would return to the Bee next year, in what would be his own last eligible year, the boy, shaking but sounding resolute, gave a decisive "yes." It was the first time the Bee has used a spell-off since the national contest's inception, in 1925, and it came after Harini and Vikram took turns spelling a series of words incorrectly, meaning a winner could not be crowned. To viewers, the pressure of the moment felt akin to penalty kicks in a high-stakes soccer tournament.
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Harini Logan Wins the National Spelling Bee After Blazing Through the Competition's First Spell-Off More

Harini Logan Wins the National Spelling Bee After Blazing Through the Competition's First Spell-Off

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  • How many other languages have a tradition of spelling bees? Most languages with an alphabetic writing system have somewhat consitent rules: you don't have to *know* how to spell anything, you can deduce the spelling from spoken forms.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      Like Cantonese and/or Mandarin? :)

      • Like Cantonese and/or Mandarin? :)

        Lord Rust said "Most languages with an alphabeting writing system". I think that disqualifies Chinese.

    • My Finnish wife was always amused by the spelling bees since Finnish spoken always clearly respects that a pronounced word in Finnish clearly reveals how it is spelled. Bernard Shaw attempted to make better logic of English's relationship to pronunciation and spelling but nothing came of it.
      • that a pronounced word in Finnish clearly reveals how it is spelled.

        Sure, once someone figures out how to pronounce those funny symbols Finns spread around in their words. I mean, who doesn't recognize that a slash through a circle represents zero.

      • Not necessarily, I mean is it pantsdrunk or pÃntsdrunk?

        Apart from that, are there any other words in Finnish you need to know?

        • The ä and the a are pronounced differently, just, as in English there are two possible pronouncing possibilities for that letter. Since I am a Helsinki citizen I am somewhat familiar with the language, but thanks for the offer.
          • It was meant as a rhetorical question rather than an offer, i.e. once you've figured out how to get pantsdrunk is there anything more you need?
            • In the current world situation, 90 percent of activities seem to me to be vastly insane, I am totally lost as to what may be possible.

    • Working out how to spell phonetically in a language that is consistently organized is a valuable skill in itself. And there are potentially a lot of tricky loan words used in science, mathematics, and medicine that could prove to be challenging.

      For what it's worth, I took a quick peek and found a word list [nationalsp...ingbee.com] for a Spanish spelling bee. The words all seem pretty ordinary to me and good for young students or those learning Spanish as a second language. Watching a match with this word list is not going to be ver

    • How many other languages have a tradition of spelling bees?

      What do you mean other languages: Spelling Bees are not even an English thing, they're an American cultural thing. If you look really hard you might be able to find one in the UK, but if they exist they are vanishingly rare. Sure they can only exist meaningfully in a language with insane spelling but they're still one of those very strange American things. We see spelling bees the same way you see non mixing taps when you visit the UK.

      • What do you mean other languages: Spelling Bees are not even an English thing, they're an American cultural thing

        And the people who win them are always Indian.

    • I think the fact that it is called a "bee" and not a "competition" or "contest" or "match" or similar just demonstrates how badly the English language is in need of refactoring.

  • Judges had to review the video replay to make the call.. in a spelling bee. That makes me chuckle.

  • Psych (Score:2)

    by JBMcB ( 73720 )

    "Your word is banana."
    "Can you use it in a sentence?"
    "Anna Banana would like to hear "Venus" by Bananarama. Banana."

    "Your word is Mitchum."
    "Can you use it in a sentence?"
    "Next time I go to the store I need to pick up some Mitchum Ice Blast. Mitchum."

  • Unless Harini Logan is a computer, what does this have to do with anything? And if Harini Logan is a computer, this is a trivial task.

  • Spelling bees is deeply rooted in the US culture, but has nearly zero relevance anywhere else. Also.. by the nature of the topic this clearly does not belong on ./

  • Spelling bees are really weird for us Romance Language Speakers (think spanish, portugese, italian, romanian, etc).

    The worst part is that due to cultural influence (movies, TV, etc), spelling bees in our languages are starting to appear here too... Super weird.

    Short of some weird or exceptional words, most words in our languages are super-easy to spell, as the sounds of the different letters and letter combos, and the grammar rules, are pretty consistent.

    In English is significantly more difficult.

    Having said that, I am not a linguist or a philologist, perhaps if one joins the dicussion, s/he may shed some light on the issue.

    For what is worth, my mother tongue is Spanish, my English was/is decent (296/300 in my ToEFL way back when) and I also speak French, those are my reference points.

    PS: Forgive the excesive use of the word "weird", not enough coffee yet to get synonyms from the top of my head or to use the Thesarus, also, too lazy to spellchech /. posts.

    • Spelling bees are really weird for us Romance Language Speakers (think spanish, portugese, italian, romanian, etc).

      They're weird for us no American English speakers too.

    • http://nationalspanishspelling... [nationalsp...ingbee.com]
      Search "concursos de ortografía"

    • Short of some weird or exceptional words, most words in our languages are super-easy to spell, as the sounds of the different letters and letter combos, and the grammar rules, are pretty consistent.

      In English is significantly more difficult.

      It's those weird and exceptional words that make up a lot of the word list for the National Spelling Bee. Words such as pachytylus, thanatophidia, xanthosis, and stromuhr.

      So it's not so much about knowing English's irregular spelling rules, but instead about knowing how to spell little-used words.

      • So it's not so much about knowing English's irregular spelling rules, but instead about knowing how to spell little-used words.

        True, but in Romance languages even little-used words are trivial to spell. Take Spanish, for example. The only possible points of confusion are whether a "b" sound is spelled with a "v" or a "b" and whether an "s" sound is spelled with an "s", a "c" or a "z" -- and that latter point isn't even true if you use the pronunciation from parts of Spain that pronounce the "c" and the "z" (approximately) the way that English speakers pronounce the "th" in "thin". For people using that pronunciation, the only quest

  • "This is just such a dream,"
    My spelling bee experiences were not quite that good, even when I won and received a prize.

  • Because out here in the real world, nobody gives half a fuck about spelling bees. Maybe we don't consider it so awesome and unbelievable that our students can actually spell words properly.

  • John Smith.
    Jack Johnson.
    Anna White.

  • Did they change the spelling bee rules? I thought it was all about spelling. They could even ask for a word's definition. Now they have to define the words too?
  • The worst part is that due to cultural influence (movies, TV, etc), spelling bees in our languages are starting to appear here too, weird.
  • The worst part is that due to cultural influence (movies, TV, etc), spelling bees in our languages are starting to appear here too... Super weird. [URL=https://techzpod.com/]techzpod[/URL] [URL=https://get-mobdrovip.com]download mobdro[/URL]

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