Breaking the Dictionary

by Doctor Science

The Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday night ended in an 8-way tie, when the competition ran out of sufficiently challenging words.
“We’re throwing the dictionary at you. And so far, you are showing this dictionary who is boss," they told the contestants.

The eight final-round words were: auslaut, erysipelas, bougainvillea, aiguillette, pendeloque, palama, cernuous, odylic. Of those, I'd only seen 3 before, and 4 of them are unknown to my spellchecker.

Six of the 8 finalists appear to be from South Asian families. One is white, and one (Christopher Serrao) may be Filipino-American, Hispanic, or have ancestors from Goa, I don't know.

More striking to me than the dominance of South Asians (which has become the norm in recent decades) is that not all the contestants are using the same methodology. Shruthika Padhy (#307) and Christopher Serrao (#427) both do something distinctive: writing on themselves with a finger as they spell. I have done something similar myself on an ad hoc basis, but I've never seen it in such a formal context.

Both of those kids are from NJ, though from different parts of the state. I wonder if finger-writing is a method that's been developed in this region and is mostly used here (I'm in NJ, too), or if it's part of the arsenal of spelling methods nationwide, and it's just coincidence that the 2 kids for whom it happens to work well are in the same state. Either way, it proves that the spelling bee community is experimenting with a variety of methods, to find ones that work best in general and for particular individuals.

The amazing 8-way tie suggests to me that they've made a pedagogical breakthrough: they've "cracked" English spelling, at least in this format. They've developed methods for teaching memorization and recall that work, that can repeatedly solve this particular problem, and train talented children to have lexical arsenals on the order of 100,000 words.

I don't think these children have "superhuman" talent, just a couple of standard deviations above the mean talent. But their parents and grandparents come from a culture with an array of mnemonic techniques developed for word-perfect memorization of extremely long texts (the Mahābhārata is almost 2 million words). The problem of English spelling is different, of course, but the idea that rote learning is a teachable skill using an arsenal of methods was there to guide experimentation.

In the discussion at Language Log I said perfect English spelling reminds me of the 4-minute mile: people used to think it would take a unique talent to do it, but after it was done, improved training methods made it accessible to a wider pool of talented runners. Another commenter wrote, So you're saying that someday English spelling might be as easy as climbing Mount Everest? It's not a bad analogy, in that Nationals can expect to see a traffic jam at the top:

A long queue of mountain climbers line a path on Mount Everest on May 22, 2019. 11 climbers died on Everest last week, most while descending from the congested summit during only a few windows of good weather. Nimsdai Project Possible/AP; cropped & resized by me

Nepal is discussing changes to the rules for summiting Everest to prevent this sort of thing. Fortunately the Scripps National Spelling Bee--unlike Everest--doesn't have a route littered with corpses, but they probably need to think about changing their rules, too, if they want to hand out only a limited amount of first-prize money.

There's still a lot to know about how this collective brain-hacking process has worked, but even the outline I've given here should give plenty of ideas for fantasy (like Earthsea) and science fiction (like the Mentats of Dune). Not to mention that the New York Times' list of spelling bee books and films doesn't include ANY fictional media centered on a South Asian character, wow.

I don't know if *all* of that neglect is racism--some of it may be an American storytelling convention that wants to focus on heroic individuals, not supportive communities and cultures. But there are rich and distinctive stories to be told, here.

Rama kills the demon warrior Makaraksha in combat, from a manuscript of the Ramayana. The crescent-shaped arrowhead Rama is using was a real thing.

Comments

[wj]

Personally, I'm only aware of having previously encountered two of those words: bougainvillea and aiguillette. And here I thought I had a large vocabulary.

...the idea that rote learning is a teachable skill using an arsenal of methods was there to guide experimentation.

There is, however, some question as to whether rote memorization is a desirable pedagogical technique. Yes, it has some uses -- simply gotta memorize the multiplication tables. But beyond that fairly limited corpus, it may be less useful or even a negative.

Which leads me to wonder if changing the rules on the National Spelling Bee is really the way to go. Perhaps it is time to shift our contests of educational achievement to something else. A century or more ago, spelling was at least something that anyone, from however tiny and remote a school, could master. But now? I think there are better areas to focus on.

[Nigel]

...you're saying that someday English spelling might be as easy as climbing Mount Everest? It's not a bad analogy...

I’m happy not to go beyond base camp.

For everything beyond that, the occasionally surrealistic malapropisms of autocorrect will do.

[cleek]

And here I thought I had a large vocabulary.

you probably know how to use the words, not just how to spell them.

[russell]

Before writing was invented, or at least was commonplace, humans held their common understanding of the world and their own history as stories, in memory. Which were spoken, or sung, from memory, which apparently could take quite a long time. Hours, days.

The poetic structure of the story - rhyme, meter, repeated patterns - helped in remembering everything. Music, also. The Iroquois used beads sewn into patterns, aka wampum.

Memory hacking - techniques to support and extend human memory - are in some cases ancient. Narrative, rhyme, meter, melody, verbal and other patterns and structures, all have a long history.

[Girl from the North Country]

For me it was erysipelas and bougainvillea, but I'm with wj when he wonders whether rote memorization is a particularly desirable pedagogical technique. I believe it's a useful technique to know, and I have no doubt that being able to memorise huge amounts of e.g. poetry can be a great benefit throughout life (for later entertainment, or consolation, as the case might be), but apart from that I can't help feeling that teaching critical thinking, logic etc is a great deal more useful.

There's an annual TV series here on Channel 4 called Child Genius, when kids between about 8 and 12 nominate themselves (and sometimes are nominated by horrendously pushy parents), and then undergo various rounds of spelling, mental arithmetic, timed memorisation of random information, and questioning on a specialist subject which they have previously selected and swotted up on, and are then cross-examined on to supposed "university level" standard by academics in the relevant fields. All the kids have previously been IQ tested (not nearly as common in the UK as in the US) and are almost always in the top 0.01 - 1%, and the contest is supervised by someone from Mensa. There are plenty of human interest interviews with the kids and the parents, strategically scattered throughout.

It's a strange show, over about 4 weeks of elimination rounds, and one gets invested in the kids and their life stories, and the fascinating different relationships between the kids, their (often but not always horrific) parents, and siblings. There's a wide cultural range, but kids/families from Chinese and sub-continental cultures are noticeably disproportionately represented compared to their incidence in the population, and it's interesting to see the different attitudes to openly excelling: famously a problematic concept for the rather hypocritical English!

[John D. Thullen]

Great kids!

Perhaps they'll make it to the Shite House one day and, unlike the current elites working there, they'll practice proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar in the memos and news releases, if they aren't deported first for spelling while brown.

I'm all for rote memorization, as long as the more subtle educational pedagogical techniques are not ignored.

I don't understand why it must be either/or and not both.

I remember when Barney Fife attended the his 20th school reunion and made the mistake of sidling up to his English teacher, now elderly, and she narrowed her eyes at him and asked churchladyishly "Barney, can you spell 'necessary', hmm?"

Barney looked down at his shoes and actually started giving it a try, "Well..." before stopping himself, being the 36-year old Deputy Sheriff of Mayberry and more intent on reuniting with Thelma Lou.

Declaiming from memory is an admirable talent, especially among the Irish, but when it fails, at least it is hilarious.

Here's Sarah Death Palin, in an earlier incarnation showing us how it's done:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx5d3haRG7M

and ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ux3DKxxFoM

My best friend in grade school went to the finals in our school spelling bee, only to be eliminated when he misspelled .... "misspell"

He wept profusely all the way back down the aisle to the seat I saved for him, as I had been eliminated in the previous round.

I don't remember my word.

[Nigel]

Although it is of course known in other countries, the spelling bee seems to be a peculiarly American institution.
(Though I remember regular spelling tests in primary school, they didn’t bother me much since I read a great deal. Latin vocab was rather more irksome, and I remember only a fraction of what I memorised by rote.)

In any event, I’m more inclined to admire the example of Shakespeare, who doesn’t seem to have been able to spell even his own name with any consistency, and if he needed a word, invented it.

[sapient]

I remember spelling bees as being fun. I was a fairly competent speller (despite my lazy and typo-ridden comments here arguing the contrary), and did well in spelling bees at school, but wasn't a star. I don't remember anyone thinking that spelling prowess indicated great intellectual achievement. it does indicate attention to detail, and effort.

And why not be good at it? I'm good at a few things that no one else cares about, and although it doesn't make me rich or famous, it makes me happy.

What russell said about performance and narration (by memory or improvisation) of history, poetry, songs and stories has served many cultures very well. I wish I were better at that, and it's a tradition that I wish my family of origin had fostered.

[John D. Thullen]

Not spelling, but my son and I exchange these name lists every baseball draft season:

https://www.mlb.com/cut4/2019-mlb-draft-s-best-names

Hilarious and fascinating what our parents call us.

Puts Coco Laaaa .....Boy in the backseat.

Could put the baseball nickname thing out of business.

[russell]

no Van Lingle Mungo?

[wj]

So many of those are just guys whose families got stuck with funky names. Possibly generations ago. Possibly by immigration officials when the ancestors barely spoke English. Can't see making fun of them for that.

Those whose parents dumped weirdness on them, however? Still not the player's fault. But at least the perp might still be around to be embarassed.

[Pro Bono]

I'm baffled by the whole concept. What's it for?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"Breaking the Dictionary"

Clearly, more, new words are required.

"Covfefe", for example. The problem comes when trying to use it in a sentence.

English is a chaotic mess of proto-germanic, French, Latin, Norwegian, and Gaelic borrowed words, plus whatever other words can be stolen because they weren't sufficiently nailed down.

Most other languages? "It's spelled the way it sounds, just follow the rules". English? Hahahahahaha.

I do know that kids learning Irish have to study the spelling; I'm not sure whether the bad influence comes from English, or the other way around. Probably depends on which side of the Irish Sea you ask the question.

[JanieM]

Never mind Irish, what about Welsh? ;-)

When my son lived in China (five years total), one of the many things his Chinese friends were always bragging about was how much easier Chinese surely is to learn than English, because......

Hmmmmmmmmm.

[CharlesWT]

An English language essay by Poul Anderson without any non-Germanic words:

Uncleftish Beholding

[hairshirthedonist]

I'd hate to try to figure out what that essay meant without some background in physics.

[Priest]

That was interesting, but I like Venus Flytrap's quick lesson about atoms in the WKRP episode better, I think.

[Hartmut]

That essay is brilliant. It takes a moment to retranslate the scientific terms into the ones we are used to. That done the text becomes elementary (pun not intended). I think the retranslation requires less of a background in physics tahn a basic knowledge of chemistry and classical Greek. I love the "lightrotting" (radioactive decay) and the "weeneitherbit" (neutrino).

[wj]

Poul had a degree in physics, which doubtless helped him come up with this. That and a seriously whimsical sense of humor. (See stories like A Bicycle Built for Brew.)

[Girl from the North Country]

I love things like Nor are stuff and work unakin. There's an almost poetic quality to it, maybe like the sagas?

[Hartmut]

Icelandic tries to follow that path, creating new words wherever possible instead of adopting foreign ones. E.g tölva for computer, a contraction from tala (number) and völva (seeress, prophetess). Or efnafræði (chemistry), which would translate as stuff-ken.

[Hartmut]

And then there is tölvuheim (realm of the wise woman of numbers) aka cyberspace.

original version
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1tYM3v3bvM
updated for the TV series
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHWwaGVpFDE

[Pro Bono]

German does the same, eg 'Fernsehen' for television.

[Hartmut]

It's mixed and changing over time. Some things have several changes behind them. E.g. French->German->English->German. Often both the German and the 'foreign' terms are used equally (e.g. Computer/Rechner). Foreign verbs often get pressed into German grammar with occasional disputes (is it upgeloaded or geuploaded?). And we create our own English words e.g. Beamer (video projector) or Handy (cellphone).

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"And then there is tölvuheim (realm of the wise woman of numbers) aka cyberspace."

Awesome, unfortunately Trollheim seems to be more accurate in this age we live in.

[CJColucci]

russell:

I used to browse the old print Baseball Encyclopedia to find names for characters. I'm not sure how to do it in Baseball Reference.