Hey, there! Log in / Register
Roslindale man is a national champion
By adamg on Mon, 06/01/2015 - 7:17am
Our own Michael Kerpan was in Maryland last week for the Scripps National Spelling Bee - an event he won in 1965.
Neighborhoods:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Congradulasions!
Congradulasions!
;-}
Kids in the finals today sem to be better spellers than I was way back then. I wouldn't have had a chance this year.
That's awesome!
You won a national contest? That's amazing.
Man, you're not kidding. The kids today are amazing. For those that don't know, for the last two years in a row, they had to have co-champions because the contest ran out of words on its list.
Here are some of the last words from this year's contest:
scherenschnitte
nunatak
acritarch
iridocyclitis
Bruxellois
Pyrrhuloxia
They didn't "run out of words" either year....
... they have a new-ish rule. When there are just 2 or 3 spellers left, they switch to a special 25 word "championship word list" (not sure of the how they decide whether they switch at 3 or at 2 -- this year they switched at 3 spellers left). And that's all the words they will ask. If no one goofs, one could now even have a 3-way tie.
The year I won, Judy Marie Guarr and I went 17 rounds one-on-one. Such a drawn-out confrontation is now impossible -- unless they change the rules again.
Not fair
I don't know what the rules are for English vs. non-English words but those two don't seem to quite fit into the strict definition of English. Professor Google leads me to believe they are German and Inuit, respectively.
Same for Scrabble
Good point, I never know where the line is for valid Scrabble words. It seems inconsistent.
I think anything found in the latest edition....
... of the Merriam-Webster Unabridged dictionary is considered fair game. I only have the 1962 edition of this -- and have not yet checked to see if these were included inthat edition.
But, there WERE a LOT more foreign sounding words this year than there were 50 years ago. ;-}
I know the first one
scherenschnitte is a word I know that refers to fancy paper cutting (actually Swiss-German). Do a Google image search to see some cool examples.
No disrespect to Michael, but
No disrespect to Michael, but it's because of stuff like this that I don't pay much attention to spelling bees, since they're not a measure of anything that matters. I'm otherwise nerdy enough to be their target demographic.
Most of the words 50 years ago....
... were weird _English_ words. Sure, lots of stuff _derived_ from other languages (like ALL English words) and weird foreign words that actually might get used (if only very occasionally) -- but relatively few words that seemed like they had been plucked directly from foreign languages.