The Spelling Bee, Asian linguist Kings and Mendeleev table – Part1

Once again, it’s one of those “a bit of that, a dash of that” kind of posts. I am covering The spelling bee, Asian linguist Kings and Mendeleev table in this. Do not worry, It’s my job to combine three seemingly mutually exclusive topics. I am quite impressed myself writing it, there is quite a good possibility that you might like as well. 😊

Okay, Let’s start with the Spelling Bee. I argue that Spelling Bee is an entirely pointless undertaking and It, unfortunately, chooses to celebrate the wrong attribute of the Language – the imperfection. Think about this, the fundamental premise of this competition is based on the weakness of the Language, not strength. Try disputing this: You cannot never hold such a contest for a language when it has ‘only one way to write a sound and only one way to pronounce a letter’. Let’s say Korean, Mandarin of many of Indian languages.

I mean no offence to 1st generation Indo-American parents who (obviously) forced their second-generation Indo-American kids to memorize thousands of words. In fact, despite the overwhelming stereotype, we Indian have naturally and particularly disadvantaged to even compete. Its called knowledge of mother tongue. Yet, Indian’s go on to win the contests. Probably, the only way 2nd generation Indo-American are winning it is by unlearning how their mother tongue works. For them, Language is memorization rather than analytical.

Another thing I have observed is the contest treats for loan words badly – predominantly Asian. Let me provide a real example for you from Scripps National contest, “abinaya” and “apparently” that was correct Spelling. Really? How do then know? Who signed it off? A north Indian will swallow an ‘a’ and spell it as abinay. A south Indian will add an ‘h’ and spell it abhinaya. A Bengali might even spell it Obinaya, and he is obviously correct.

During my first ever test on English (obviously When I was a little kid) I spelt these: ‘Skool’ for school and ‘siti’ for the city. In my defence, I was learning my third Language chronologically, and the previous two had some sort of pattern in writing system – English didn’t. Just an off-topic trivia, Few of the boys managed to spell-like me and girls spelt it correctly. I am no expert on gender studies, but does this indicate Boys attend Language as an analytical problem rather than memorization problem?

Let’s inspect some languages for its fitment for a contest like a Spelling bee.

Spanish: jalapeño is pronounced as /ˌhæləˈpeɪnjoʊ/. And I rest my case.

French: The most famous French phrase in pre liberalized India was “bourgeois capitalism”. Socialism transfused newspapers started and ended their editorial with these phrases. It is apparently pronounced /ˈbʊə(r)ʒwɑː/that’s it. Its two sounds making a word!

Mandarin, however, has an entirely different approach to writing. Each word has its own symbol and vice versa. It’s incredibly unambiguous as long as you can memorize thousands of them. No scope for a spelling Bee, you either know a symbol, or you don’t.

Now comes my new favourite, Korean (Hangeul or Han’gŭ 한글 ) Language is widely regarded as one of the most straightforward scripts (Chosŏn 조선글 muntcha writing system) to learn and one of the most scientific as well. Writing in Korean is as simple as the recipe of an ice cube. You take an unambiguous consonant (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅌ ㅍ ㅎ), add an unambiguous vowel (ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ). You have an unmistakable sound, then you literally put it in a block!. Apparently, it wasn’t always like this. Fed up of illiteracy of his subjects, the king “Sejong the Great” (세종대왕) created the most straightforward script of all.

One of the most beautiful features of this script is strokes of the Symbols/letters. Some of them are caricatured versions of human mouth when that sound is actually pronounced. HOW COOL IS THAT!