Spelling Bees
What's their deal? Are they just beauty pageants for precocious children?
OXON HILL, Md. (Reuters) - Karthik Nemmani of McKinney, Texas, won the 91st Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, taking home a $40,000 cash prize after beating the same speller who defeated him at his countywide bee in February.
Nemmani, 14, went head-to-head with fellow Texan Naysa Modi, 12, for only a few moments before winning the bee with the word “koinonia,” which is a body of religious believers.
“I had confidence, but I didn’t really think it would happen,” Nemmani said moments after receiving his trophy at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in suburban Washington. “I’m just really happy. This has just been a dream come true.”
Modi quickly wiped away tears as she walked off the stage with her family. She lost the competition by misspelling the word bewusstseinslage, which is a state of consciousness or a feeling devoid of sensory components.
Nemmani’s loss to Modi at the county level would normally have disqualified him for the national bee but he took advantage of a new program called RSVBee, which allows spellers to pay to compete in the national bee.
“In tough regions like Dallas and San Francisco, a lot of kids have a lot of potential, but they aren’t able to ... qualify,” said Nemmani, who spent at least four hours a day studying for the bee.
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| by Anonymous | reply 31 | June 1, 2018 11:52 PM
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Do the Indian kids blitz these things because they are told to memorise dictionaries otherwise they won't get any korma and naan?
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | June 1, 2018 10:51 AM
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Yeah what's with Indian kids and spelling bees? Is it because they don't play any sports?
| by Anonymous | reply 2 | June 1, 2018 10:56 AM
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Indians have a hive mentality, no wonder they win all the spelling bees.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | June 1, 2018 10:56 AM
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This is a cultural observation, but having worked with many many Indian tech people over the years, they are good at memorizing and doing things according to a specific list. They aren't good at thinking outside the box or inventing new solutions to problems. For every problem, to them, there is one _exact_ solution, and no others. If you present alternative ideas from how they've learned something, they will argue with you to the death about it, because it isn't what they were taught. So if, in fact, Indian kids win spelling bees a disproportionate amount of the time, it wouldn't surprise me. If they had to use the words in creative ways, I doubt that would be the same outcome.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | June 1, 2018 10:57 AM
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They’re not beauty pageants for precocious children.
They’re beauty pageants for mega-nerd children of immigrants from the third world.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | June 1, 2018 11:05 AM
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Oh, lord, that title alone makes me ill. It could only be worse if they added DRAMA periods.
The GIRL... who spelled.... FREEDOMMMM!!!!@##@##
*clip of weeping nuns, Trinity nuclear explosion, flowers blooming and dying, lightning striking a tree*
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | June 1, 2018 11:13 AM
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no spelling bees in Spanish speaking countries, I don't believe as all is phonetic?!
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | June 1, 2018 11:45 AM
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Glad to hear from terrible spellers as they display their envy.
| by Anonymous | reply 11 | June 1, 2018 12:03 PM
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Such deplorable priorities!
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | June 1, 2018 12:56 PM
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Do the winners go on to fame and fortune? Does being a champion speller look good on an application for college, or a job resume? What good DOES it do for kids to enter these competitions?
| by Anonymous | reply 13 | June 1, 2018 1:04 PM
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They become school shooters, obviously.
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | June 1, 2018 4:52 PM
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Miss Thing! You did NOT forget about me, did you?
| by Anonymous | reply 15 | June 1, 2018 5:00 PM
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[quote]Do the winners go on to fame and fortune? Does being a champion speller look good on an application for college, or a job resume? What good DOES it do for kids to enter these competitions?
Jacques Bailly, the 1980 winner, has been the bee's head pronouncer since 2003; Paige Kimble, his runner-up and the 1981 winner, is the bee's executive director. Other winners have gone on to success in law, business, and academia.
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | June 1, 2018 5:11 PM
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Notice that the majority of spellers are minorities from multi-lingual families. Their brains are developed to notice small differences in words because you need that ability to translate quickly. It is even better developed if there is another alphabet involved. Notice the lack of white middle class "Americans" that are monolingual. Story: my first grade nephew ( 6 yrs ) speaks English, Mandarin and Spanish (multicultural parents and tiger mom). He entered a chess contest for grade schoolers and was finally beaten by a Hindu kid. The white American kids had no chance.
| by Anonymous | reply 19 | June 1, 2018 6:20 PM
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White kids could beat them at texting and............................................. well, texting.
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | June 1, 2018 6:37 PM
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I'm still traumatized from spelling the word forty as fourty in 3rd grade. Got it wrong on the spelling test and fought with the teacher (as much as a 3rd grader can) that forty couldn't possibly be right. What happened to the u? Guess that's when I learned creativity and logic, when spelling is concerned, are frowned upon.
| by Anonymous | reply 21 | June 1, 2018 6:49 PM
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I'm not sure I approve of this idea where you can PAY to compete in the national bee even if you've been eliminated by the normal process. It seems a little Veruca Salt-ish to me.
| by Anonymous | reply 22 | June 1, 2018 7:21 PM
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The rules changed this year and as part of the prize package, the winner gets deflowered by their choice of Kardashian-Jenner clan member.
| by Anonymous | reply 23 | June 1, 2018 7:27 PM
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Indian-Americans run a lot of practice competitions, there's a whole spelling bee circuit within the Desai community. So Indian-Am kids win more because they get more practice. It's really that simple.
| by Anonymous | reply 24 | June 1, 2018 7:41 PM
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I’m a white guy and I won the “all-fifth-grade” spelling bee of 1981. First I beat all of my classmates in Miss Gross’s class and then I took on the winner from Mr. Mitchell’s class and the winner from Mrs. Downey’s class.
Tense!
My winning word? “Quotient.” The secret to my success? I studied the regular class work words in addition to the extra credit words. Those fools forgot to study the extra credit words and victory was mine.
I still have that plastic trophy with my name written on it in black magic marker.
| by Anonymous | reply 25 | June 1, 2018 7:44 PM
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R24 exactly. Indian immigrants have chosen to focus on spelling bees like some blacks focus on basketball.
Practice makes perfect
| by Anonymous | reply 26 | June 1, 2018 7:45 PM
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But could he have won with an erection?
| by Anonymous | reply 27 | June 1, 2018 11:28 PM
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R13, these pageants don't exist because they're a path to fame and fortune for the children, they exist because parents are so fucking competitive with each other.
| by Anonymous | reply 28 | June 1, 2018 11:29 PM
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Spelling bee winners grow up to be Datalounge grammar trolls.
| by Anonymous | reply 29 | June 1, 2018 11:33 PM
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Long ago, I was a spelling bee winner in New Jersey, Catholic school circuit. It was all white kids then.
Bronzie, the career path leads straight to Oh, Dear on Datalounge.
| by Anonymous | reply 30 | June 1, 2018 11:49 PM
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Indians are all about status, but go for the easiest things to excel at, hence their domination in spelling bees,
| by Anonymous | reply 31 | June 1, 2018 11:52 PM
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