
What Happens to Spelling Bee Champions When They Grow Old? - paulpauper
https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/what-happens-to-spelling-bee-champions-when-they-grow-old
======
zenlibs
The answer to the question the headline poses, inferring from people sampled
in the article is: "They mostly end up in a English related academic position
in school or college setting"

~~~
learc83
There was a Doctor, a Bio-statistician, an attorney, and a radio reporter.
There were 2 English related academics in the article (and one professor of
Classics with a Ph.D. in Ancient Philosophy), so that's definitely
overrepresented, but it was more diverse than I would have expected.

~~~
sytelus
It's unfortunate the article headline is the question but there is no real
conclusion drawn in the article. It's just bunch of interviews with past
winners. It's apparent that Bee winners have unsurprisingly great memory
capacity, ability to fast search their memory and build much finer predictor
model of data they consume. So they excel at professions that requires these
attributes which are pretty much all science/tech/literature/law professions.

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emsy
Tangential, but I recently realized that spelling bees wouldn’t make sense in
a lot of other languages, because English reading is exceptionally irregular.
I wonder if there have been attempts to reform the language.

~~~
hyperpallium

      A Plan for the Improvement
      of English Spelling
    

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased
either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the
alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch"
formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling,
so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might
well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali
wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5
doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing
vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it
wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" \--
bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh",
and "th" rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl,
kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

~~~
stan_rogers
That falls apart in year 2, where it fails to recognize that in many dialects,
"w" and "wh" are distinctly different. And that's the problem in general with
real proposals for English spelling reform: exactly whose English should we be
spelling in? Consider, for example, the word _laboratory_. _Labritori_ ,
_leboratri_ , or maybe something else? You don't even need to cross the
Atlantic to run into difficulty.

~~~
jhanschoo
It's possible to design an orthography that distinguishes between phonemes
that most speakers distinguish, and the accept all variants (here e.g.
lebretri, leboratri) as valid spellings. After all, we already have variant
pronunciations reflected in spelling with some common words e.g. (dreamt,
dreamed), (knelt, kneeled), (lit, lighted).

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CalChris
_People don’t like it too much if you go around being a spell-splainer, so I
try to soften the corrections with a little humor._

True dat. I was at a seminar given by a local to remain unnamed law firm and I
spotted a spelling error in their handout. I mentioned it to one of the
speakers on the way out, more as an ice breaker to start a conversation but
received an icy response.

~~~
awakeasleep
I introduce the idea as "I found a copyedit for your handout"

By dismissively using the jargon of a profession that most people
overlook/look down on, you can often give the responsible person the
suggestion in a way that doesn't attack their ego.

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oneplane
The whole thing about 'spelling bee' seems crazy to me. What is the point in
memorising a dictionary and then repeating what was in it to an audience?

Most competitions (why is it a spelling bee and not a spelling competition?)
seem to revolve around a specific skill that stands on its own, and it's
rarely about retaining facts that are described in a book. Compared to a
physical sport, it's as if you'd remember all the rules but then not play the
game. Or compared to a sport like Go or Chess, there is no interaction with an
opponent, there is no improvisation or strategy, just data.

Maybe it's an American thing, and it holds it's value because it's a tradition
that was recently created (well, relatively recent). It's what most searches
seem to suggest... (as well as it being the reason that I don't run in to a
'bee' in other countries)

~~~
chongli
_What is the point in memorising a dictionary and then repeating what was in
it to an audience?_

You could say this about every form of recreation, let alone competitive
activity. You don't find it interesting, that's okay, different people enjoy
different things.

The best spelling bee champs (the ones winning the big scholarships) are not
just memorization machines, they have deep understanding of the etymology and
structure of English words (which I happen to find very interesting).

If you set aside a few minutes to watch the Scripps spelling bee, you'll
notice that the competitors ask about the etymology and usage of the word in a
sentence. This information gives subtle clues (such as Greek or Latin roots)
that a good speller can use to spell a word they've never seen before. That is
an impressive feat, if you ask me!

~~~
oneplane
I did watch a few of them, and I still didn't get it. You're not really
directly competing (all you have is failure count which you cannot influence -
except your own of course).

I get that it can be interesting to some people but the scale of the whole
thing (in the US) is what surprises me every time.

Then again, I also don't get reality TV or pageants. Maybe I'm not the target
audience...

~~~
CydeWeys
Huh? A spelling bee is a competition in exactly the same way that a race is.
You can't influence how fast your opponents run, you can only be faster than
them. Same in a spelling bee; you have to last longer than your opponents.

~~~
oneplane
I suppose there are races that are constructed so that you can not influence
each other, but there are plenty where you can.

At the same time, being able to spell obscure words doesn't have a wide
application like being able to run, cycle, drive or swim fast has. (but those
probably have their limits as well - fast cycling/running is handy when you
also want to be a bike courier or need to outrun a bear, but less useful when
you have a day job as a painter).

I guess in the end the point I made also works against my instinct to express
a dislike for arbitrary contest when I don't get the scale/following.

~~~
chongli
I think a better comparison is a game like chess. Is chess useful outside of
being a professional chess player/instructor? No. So being a chess Grandmaster
is every bit as useless as being a spelling bee champion, apart from the
prestige.

Having said that, being able to spell obscure words is likely to increase your
vocabulary, which may be useful if you decide to become a writer. Frankly,
that's probably more useful than learning how to throw horseshoes.

~~~
oneplane
One could argue that throwing horseshoes would have gotten the same following
as spelling bees would have if it were at least as good/cool ;-)

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bigjimmyk3
I won my state's bee in 1987, and when I got to the national bee I wondered
where these people got all these weird extra study books. Turns out there was
already a cottage industry around bee prep (which would have been great to
know beforehand).

As for the long term effects, I do notice misspellings whether i want to or
not. Sometimes it happens with syntax errors in code, too.

~~~
ghaff
TBH though, the vast majority of misspellings one sees aren't especially hard
words. They're "loose" used instead of "lose" and things like that.

Never had any interest in spelling bees but I've done a huge amount of
copyediting/editing so I'm very aware of mistakes (including misspellings) in
writing generally.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Over the past two years, "payed" in place of "paid" has become very widespread
and I have no idea why. It seems to have started on social media and has been
rapidly spreading upwards.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Over the past two years, "payed" in place of "paid" has become very
> widespread and I have no idea why

It's been common forever, because “payed” follows the most common pattern of
forming a past participle in English (“ad ‘-ed’”) and also fits the
pronunciation people are familiar with from oral communication; it's been
infecting more formal communication since automated spellchecking displaced
much second-eye proofreading because it is actually a _correct_ spelling of
that verb form for certain—though less commonly encountered—meanings of “pay”
(yes, the verb had different conjugations with the same pronunciation and
different spelling for it's different meanings because English is just that
way.)

~~~
ghaff
Another old one in that vein is hanged/hung with hanged pretty much specific
to executing people. (Although, partly because "hanged" just doesn't come up
in daily speech much any longer, hung almost certainly gets used more
frequently and isn't considered especially incorrect.)

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/hung-or-
hanged](https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/hung-or-hanged)

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Noumenon72
They don't grow old. They superannuate.

~~~
delinka
Superannuate. S-U-P-E-R...

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coldtea
They understand that their skill (usually selected by their parents for them)
is irrelevant?

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skybrian
* mid-timbred

Although, apparently "timber" is a less common variant of timbre:
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/timbre](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/timbre)

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gshakir
Thank you for this. I finally found a name for the condition where my son
remembers life events so vividly, which is called “Hyperthymestic” syndrome.
Any one else out there with this condition?

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alphakappa
>Spelling contests have remained a feature in American life since the Puritans
landed on Plymouth Rock — but is peaking at 12 years old all it’s cracked up
to be?

Whether the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock itself is not known accurately.
However, the Puritans didn’t land at whatever became the Plymouth colony. The
ones who landed were Separatists (the ones who left the Anglican Church) who
called themselves the Pilgrims. The Puritans (ones who stayed in the church to
purify it) did arrive in America, but later.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Whether the settlers landed at Plymouth Rock itself is not known accurately

I thought it was pretty well established that the landing and colony was
elsewhere (but somewhat nearby), but Plymouth Rock essentially became a
tourist attraction attached to it by fable later.

