The Master of Spelling Bee

 

TRANSCRIPT:

English is really hard. If you speak English as a second or a third language like me, then you definitely know how difficult English is, especially pronunciation. How are we supposed to say words like "Worcestershire", 'posthumous", "antidisestablishmentarianism"...? Yeah it's tough! That's why you should meet this guy. He knows how to spell and pronounce almost every single word in the English language perfectly and he will show you how you can do it too. 

In the state of Vermont, USA, I found Jacques.

"Hi Nas Daily. I'm Jacques. I've been a pronouncer for the Spelling Bee for 18 years."

His brain is like a dictionary. You can pick any word, give it to him and he will tell you how to say it, what it means and even where it came from.

"Anemone, onomatopoeia, antidisestablishmentarianism, Worcestershire, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious... backwards, suoicodilaipxecitsiligarfilacrepus."

WHAT?!

Spelling is hard especially in English because specifically in this language, you don't always speak words the same way you write them.

"This is because English is a combination of different influences. You have words from Latin, French, Greek and they each have their own spelling systems."

That's how we ended up with silent letters, double letters or the same letter having different sounds. 

"You have the letters "gh" which become the sound "f" as in 'enough' or it skipped all together like in 'night' or it can be a hard "g" like in 'ghost'. The toughest part of spelling is the 'schwa' sound which is an "uh" sound and all the 'vowels' and 'y' can make that sound. It's just a speller's nightmare."

Jacques is not just doing this for fun. He made a whole career out of it. In the U.S., they have a competition called The Spelling Bee where kids learn all the words in the dictionary, go on stage, listen to him pronounce a word and try to spell it correctly.

"haecceitas"

"h-a-e-c-c-e-i-t-a-s"

"That is correct!"

And if they win, these kids become champions!

"I won the spelling bee myself in 1980. I drilled and memorized loads and loads of words from lists of words that had been in Spelling Bees. There's the brute force memorizing and then there's the sort of analytical way and you have to combine them, the two."

So, as the expert on spelling, what is the secret to mastering English?

"I don't actually know all the words in the dictionary neither do the spellers. That would be impossible. But, if you know the meaning and the origin and the part of speech, you can triangulate on it and figure something out. There's a lot of little examples like that of patterns that you can synthesize as a speller."

And if you ask him what is his advice for English learners like you and me, this is what he has to say... 

"Work hard, work everyday, work on the simple words. The simple words in English are the most powerful ones.  All the best writers will tell you that it's those simple monosyllabic words that express the most. Unless, of course, you want to try out the Spelling Bee."

That's right! At the end of the day, English is a very difficult language for all of us native or non-native. The good news is you don't need to know how to spell 'antidisestablishmentarianism', you just need to know the basics.