Foreign Languages Bee

The winning word in this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee was "ursprache". The runner-up was eliminated after missing, "weltschmerz". The hot favourite came in 4th after missing, "heileschein" (I may have misspelled this too). These 3 words have one very important thing in common. They are all German words, not English words. Shouldn't the Spelling Bee teach us how to spell in English. I wonder if the German Spelling Bee asks the kids to spell "accommodation" (one of my English teachers favourites)--I doubt it.

German words of course don't translate well into English. All 3 of these words are the type of German words that requires a full sentence in English. If these words have ended up in an English dictionary somewhere, it is not because they are used in English by anyone, but because someone was unable to translate them into English and thought it would be a good idea to add it in.

The Bee wasn't all about German. One of the easiest words of the night was "douane". I knew this one because I studied French and visit there frequently. This is also not an English word, but is the French word for Customs, and you will see it shortly after deplaning in Paris. My wife's favourite was kilim (because she guessed it right). This is a Turkish word for a kind of carpet. Again not an English word, just the transliteration from the Turkish.

All these foreign root words actually makes the Spelling Bee more challenging than I ever imagined. However, this is not a test of spelling, it is a test of your knowledge of foreign languages. This should be encouraged, American children could certainly do with some knowledge of things non-American. Let's just not call it a Spelling Bee.