To Bee Or Not To Bee
I watched the National Spelling Bee last night. Very exciting. The best thing was they announced the words before showing the TV audience how to spell them. Most of them were impossible, but the last three I actually got!
The winning word was ursprache, meaning protolanguage. I didn't know the word, but hearing the meaning and the German etymology, I was able to figure it out.
The previous two words were actually pretty easy, and fairly common. One was kundalini. I'm no yoga expert, but I've certainly seen this word a number of times, along with chakra, satori, namaste, tantra and Kama Sutra.
The other was another of German origin, maybe my favorite next to schadenfreude and frankfurter--weltschmerz (world-weariness). I was surprised to see it in a late round. Maybe they thought the contestants would add on a "t" near the end.
posted by LAGuy @ 1:12 AM
2 Comments:
I agree - it was compelling TV.
And I loved the reaction of the winner: asked what she would remember most about the night, she answered she was just so happy to be fed the word "ursprache," which she knew. The moment the word was fed to her, it was obvious by the look on her face that it was one she remembered well.
One thing I didn't quite get was the format. After the second-place winner (aka, the loser) missed a word, the winner had to spell two words in a row correctly. It had something to do with rounds.
It makes more sense to me, once you're down to two, that if one misses, the other has to get the same word right. (This would mean one would have to go offstage while the other got a new word.)
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