Most families have one person who can perform complex mathematical operations in their head, while the rest of us are still scribbling down the problem. There is typically a navigator in each family who remembers exactly how to get anywhere based on familiar landmarks. And every family has a speller. You know the one. The family member who should have been named “Now how do you spell . . ?” ##M:[more]##
If you come running whenever you hear that question, or if you just like watching people test their knowledge in front of an audience, mark the Plainsboro Library’s Summer Spelling Bee on your calendar. On Thursday, July 28, from 7 p.m. until about 10 p.m. (past closing time), the library will host its annual community spelling contest. Everyone is welcome to participate — not just Plainsboro residents. Medals will be awarded to the top three winners. It’s free to enter, and free to watch.
Last year some 100 people showed up to watch 40 contestants battle it out. Jinny Baeckler, director of the library, warns, “The chairs will run out, so get there early. There is no fee, but those who want to compete have to register in advance. However, they can do that right up until the bee begins.”
Being a good speller knows no boundaries. Good spellers can be old, young, extremely intelligent, or merely average. At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which pits the best spellers in the country in a winner-take-all competition, people of every size, shape, age and color show up. The only requirement is the willingness to attempt to spell really difficult words. Words like eudaemonic (winning word for 1960), smaragdine (1961), autochthonous (2004) and vivisepulture (1996).
This year’s winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Anurag Kashyap, won by spelling “appoggiatura.” By the way, Kashyap, who lives in Poway, California, competed against 272 other contestants. He is 13 years old.
The national bee was started by The Louisville Courier-Journal in 1925 with just nine contestants, with the stated purpose to “help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts, and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives.” Scripps assumed sponsorship in 1941. Out of 80 champions to date, 42 have been female, while 38 were male. Forty-six winners were only children; three sets of spellers have been twins, and 23 winners have had at least one relative who competed in previous national finals.
“People always ask me, how does this work?” says Baeckler. “How can a library hold a spelling bee? Well, it works because we have wonderful people in the community. I listen to what people want and what’s feasible for a library to accommodate, and we try to do that. We mirror the people.
“Several years ago, our summer program focused on how education was handled back in colonial times. The spelling bee portion of that program was so popular — that we have made it part of our summer program ever since.”
At the library spelling bee, lists of words will be used from the same list that Scripps uses for the national spelling bee. The words are gradated, with separate lists for each age category. There are 11 groups: one for pre-school to 5 years, one for each grade up through 6, and one each for the combined grades of 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12. Everyone competes together above that level.
A winner is chosen from each category. Each person gets three tries to spell a word before being dismissed. When it gets down to the last three people, the rules change and those people go head-to-head, no matter their ages. At that point, the contestant is given a word. If they can’t spell it, but neither can the other contestants, it’s not counted as a mistake. As soon as someone can spell a word, that the other’s can not, they win. If you make a mistake, you are not out until someone can spell the word.
The Plainsboro library winner is frequently a fifth or sixth grader. “I don’t know why that is,” admits Baeckler. “We have hypothesized. By the time you get to the to the final three, the words are no longer gradated. But often by that time the adults have bumped themselves out because they had more difficult words getting to that point. It is astounding the complexity of the words these little kids can spell.”
Is it difficult to fashion a spelling bee in a community with such a high level of cultural diversity? “The hardest part,” says Baeckler, “is dealing with accents. We encourage everyone to speak slowly and clearly, because we may not hear something correctly because of an accent. It’s not a problem, it’s just a fact. The wonderful thing about Plainsboro is we all know we’re dealing with accents. It’s one of the nice things about recognizing and respecting diversity.
“Because of the various pronunciations, it can be very hard to judge. We have three people listening at all times for the spelling. When we don’t understand someone’s accent, we give each other a look that says, ‘I didn’t get that, did you?’ We just ask them to repeat themselves until we’re certain.”
“I think the spelling bee is so successful here because of the spirit pervading the event that it’s fun to take a gamble — to give it a try. There’s a tremendous joy in this gamesmanship. Winning or losing isn’t so important, and we all have a good time at an intellectual endeavor. Adults enjoy it as much as children do. When you hear some of these kids that can spell these incredibly difficult words; they’re allowed to ask if it’s a Greek word, or a root word — you realize how intelligent, how disciplined, and how dedicated they are. You might not expect them to use these words in everyday conversation, but they have but they have perfect control over the usage and the meaning.
“It’s fun to be able to credit or praise kids in public for knowing a lot. It’s wonderful to see adults become kids and you’re all in it together. It’s learning at its best.”
— Fran Ianacone
Spelling Bee, Plainsboro Public Library, 641 Plainsboro Road, 609-275-2897. Thursday, July 28, 7 p.m.
