WASHINGTON, May 29 — Sai Gunturi, a 13-year-old eighth-grader from Dallas, walked away with a check for $12,000 and the title of America’s best speller Thursday after he confidently spelled “pococurante” in the final round of the National Spelling Bee.

poco curante (from poco = little, not much, and curare, here = to care)
he who doesn't care much

If the word reader (or whatever they call it) pronounced it right, how could the speller miss?

How do you say it in English?

I saw it on TV, and would like to note that he is originally from India--not the first child from there who has had to learn English and then gone on to take spelling awards.
The proctor pronounced it poh-koh-cure-ON-tay, as I recall. I'd never heard or seen the word before.

I'm with Faldage on this one. If it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, seems like a no-brainer to me. And Jackie, surely the child learned English in India before moving here?

I was watching with my children and many of the words were much harder than the one that Sai won on. It was just the luck of the draw. He had obviously seen the word before because as soon as they said it he got a huge smile on his face and went right into the spelling.

I have the impression that English is the, er, Linga Franca of the educated classes in India. Surely the kid learned English over there before coming here.
Are we really sure he's from over there, though? Maybe he was born and/or raised in our own back yard, big though it is.

I reckon he would have had to spell a word that someone else missed. He might have just used intuition to get it. OTOH, intuition about how words might be spelled is not a bad thing and may be a skill in its own right. He might have tried P-O-C-C-O ... but he didn't. Also standing up there with the pressure on - this was his final year to do it - makes it all the easier to slip up.

Browsing spellingbee.com, I note he attended a Catholic school instead of being homeschooled. (Thirty-one of the 251 spellers were categorized as homeschooled.)
The second place winner was homeschooled. Of top 6, 2 were homeschooled.

From their web page, his winning words were:
1 sanguine sanguine
2 (written round) (advanced to round three)
3 insalubrious insalubrious
4 Veracruzano Veracruzano
5 marmoraceous marmoraceous
6 mistassini mistassini
7 solfeggio solfeggio
8 piezochemistry piezochemistry
9 voussoir voussoir
10 halogeton halogeton
11 dipnoous dipnoous
12 gadarene gadorene
13 peirastic peirastic
14 rhathymia rhathymia
15 pococurante pococurante

Not all were difficult, but most I think are not too obvious.

I also just noticed that the first winner ever was Frank Neuhauser of Louisville,KY in 1925. The second winner was Pauline Bell also of Louisville, in 1926. Further along was Waneeta Beckley of Louisville in 1937.

Some other cities with multiple champions: Denver, El Paso, Knoxville.
I'm kinda wondering if this thing started in KY or somewhere thereabouts.
(Just check their site and, yes, it was started by the Louisville Courier-Journal.)


k

Surely the kid learned English over there before coming here.

See, Dub Dub'? You're not the onliest liver to get chopped. (An I ain' buying no oh-I-read-upside-down excuses. It were the post he were responding to.)

excuses


Of course I read both posts before responding this time. It's not like I claimed it was an original thought. Jeez.

k

pococurante

SYLLABICATION: po·co·cu·ran·te
PRONUNCIATION: pk-k-rnt, -ränt
ADJECTIVE: Indifferent; apathetic.
NOUN: One who does not care.
ETYMOLOGY: Italian : poco, little; see poco + curante, present participle of curare, to care for (from Latin crre, from cra, care).
OTHER FORMS: poco·cu·rantism

Obviously the young man is not poscocurante about spelling.

I think it hopeless to try to observe thread etiquette in
AWADtalk. The pace is so fast, by the time you submit a post
a couple others have been added.

I have to admit five words on FF's list are new to me.

And, for crying out loud, let's skip the bitching about thread etiquette.

Mississippi's record of not winning ever is safe for another year.

" five words "

Geez, Bill, you wordcrazy man. All but three were completely new to me. Pococurante I'd heard before, but didn't know what it meant. Salubrious and sanguine I use a coupla times a year maybe. I'd never used inSalubrious, but I'd know what it meant if I saw it. The rest were completely new to me.


k

today's popular expiscatory word is: pococurante
: )

"...surely the child learned English in India before moving here."

Perhaps, but, living in Texas, he would have been exposed to whatever language it is that they speak in the Lone Star Republic. One can imagine his mother, coming into the dining room from the kitchen carrying a steaming bowl, and asking "Dhal, y'all?"

"Vegetarian Food is quite common in India & usually comprises Rice, Bread, Dhal (Pulses), Vegetables, Curd, Pickle & other add ons. So many times it also include some sweets."

pulse 1 8
n.
5ME pous < OFr < L pulsus (venarum), beating (of the veins) < pulsus, pp. of pellere, to beat: see FELT16
1 the regular beating in the arteries, caused by the contractions of the heart
2 any beat, signal, vibration, etc. that is regular or rhythmical
3 the perceptible underlying feelings of the public or of a particular group
4 a variation, characterized by a rise, limited duration, and decline, of a quantity whose value normally is constant; specif., a) Elec. a brief surge of voltage or current b) Radio a very short burst of electromagnetic waves
vi.
pulsed, puls4ing to pulsate; throb
vt.
1 to cause to pulsate
2 to drive (an engine, etc.) by pulses
3 Elec. to apply pulses to
4 Radio to modify (an electromagnetic wave) by means of pulses
puls$er
n.

pulse 2
n.
5ME pous < OFr pouls < L puls (gen. pultis), a pottage made of meal or pulse, prob. < Gr poltos < IE base *pel3, dust, meal > L pollen, pulvis6
1 the edible seeds of peas, beans, lentils, and similar plants having pods
2 any leguminous plant

thread etiquette (six posts above)

"threadiquette" ?

(Or maybe "threatiquette," if you should want to mean "You better be polite, or else..." )

Rools Fush in where otherts fear to thread.

Or get there lastest with the leastest.

expiscatory, adj. [chiefly Scot] tending to expiscate or fish out: searching.

Gee, Father Steve: at first I thought you were going to haul tsuwm into court for fishing out of season.

"I have the impression that English is the, er, Linga Franca of the educated classes in India. Surely the kid learned English over there before coming here."

True (most of the times.)

An interesting phenomenon occurs due to India having a large number of disparate regional languages. A South Indian, for example, may be able to communicate with a North Indian more comfortably (or at times, only) in English... 'Coz the only other language they know well is their respective regional language, which may or may not be Hindi. I experienced this first-hand, and the strangeness and humor of the situation was brought home only when an American noticed it.

Edit: Having said that, an Indian still has to learn English, as it is not his/her 'mother-tongue'. Many are not as comfortable with spoken English as they are with reading or writing it; and their use of the language, while being correct on most occasions, might be considered awkward by native speakers of English (another first-hand experience!)

"this was his final year to do it" (Fallible Fiend's post) led me to believe that this contest is open only to children below a specific age. Then how come this child was given the title of "the title of America’s best speller" (Father Steve's first post) ? There might be other people who can spell better but are not eligible for the contest, if I understood the two statements correctly...

As with, I suspect, many others on this board, spelling has never a problem for me, although a word such as pococurante might well, even now (or especially now) trip me up. I used to relish spelling tests because I could excel at them with next to no effort. I've tried to bear that in mind when others are having difficulty with my lack of understanding of something that they are good at. Which is damned near everything except spelling.

Contest Rules of the 76th Annual
Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

1. Students participating in the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., must qualify under nine requirements:

(1) they must not have passed beyond the eighth grade on or before February 1, 2003;

(2) they must not have reached their 16th birthday on or before the date of the national finals, May 28, 2003;

(3) they, their parents, educators, relatives, or acquaintances must not have obtained a copy of the 2003 School Pronouncer Guide for use in studying;

(4) they must not have spelled in their final local spelling bee any words that appear in the 2003 School Pronouncer Guide;

(5) they must not have won their final local spelling bee before February 1, 2003;

(6) they must not have been disqualified at any level of any sponsor's spelling bee program between June 2002 and April 2003;

(7) they must not have eschewed normal school activity in favor of preparation for spelling bees;

(8) they must not have been declared the champion of any previous Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.; and

(9) they must be the individual champion (last one standing) of a sponsor's final spelling bee.

Aren't rules 3 and 4 just a tad contradictory?

Rules 3 and 4 are no more contradictory than the rules for running for judge in Washington State. The Ethical Canons require that the judicial candidate not know who contributes to his/her campaign. The Public Disclosure Commission rules require that the candidate, and no one else, certify under penalty of perjury that the reports of who contributed to his/her campaign are accurate and complete. Now, just how in hell is anybody supposed to abide by both rules?

an Indian still has to learn English


I make the mistake sometimes of implying that my personal experience and my personal acquaintances are representative of the general case. I had a curious coterie of close friends and acquaintances while I was a student at university. My wedding pictures tell the tail and I still remember my grandpa pulling me aside before the ceremony and asking suspiciously, "Son ... do you have any *American* friends?" (He called his grandsons "son" and his granddaughters "daughter" ... no idea why ... maybe it's a common thing for peole of his generation.)

Sometimes (in my experience) the English spoken by Indians does sound awkward, maybe overly complicated. I guess I had chalked it up to colloquial habits of speech in India. I idolized them because when I got past the accents I discovered they tended to be extremely erudite. Even the few I disliked tended to have a sense of humor I relished. Maybe living in Kentucky my standards were low and I'd think anybody who could speak in complete sentences was a genius. We did have (we do have) a crappy school system, but there's a lot of smart people there. Hard to say.

Also, accent is usually a far more difficult thing to understand (at least at first) than the ornate grammar or sometimes esoteric vocabulary. This part isn't just my experience, though. I've spoken to many native English speakers who have said the same thing about trying to understand Indian speakers of English.

OTOH, of my 3 closest Indian friends at the time, two learned English at home (one attended school in England and he could do a great texan ... could have me in tears). So, one learned a lot at home, one at least a little. One may or may not have learned at home. I don't think I ever talked to him about it. Probably not, now that I think about it, but I'm not sure. Kinda odd. He had a BA in English (or literature or something like that) from some Indian University. G (from Kerala) spoke English and Malayallam; E (from Bombay, Goa) English and Hindi; D (from bengal, Calcutta i think) English, Hindi, and Bengali.

ah, well ... kids need something.

k

I had a young friend who came to this country from BudaPest to work as an international counselor at a church summer camp. His name was Peter. He spoke three languages fluently; English was not one of them and part of his design for coming here for a summer was to improve his English skills. His English was so thickly accented as to make it difficult for us native speakers to understand. Most of the English he had learned was from BBC radio broadcasts. On occasion, he would entertain us all by perfectly imitating the perfectly-Engish accent and delivery of the broadcasters: "This is the BBC Overseas Service."

Rules 3 and 4 are no more contradictory than the rules for running for judge in Washington State. The Ethical Canons require that the judicial candidate not know who contributes to his/her campaign. The Public Disclosure Commission rules require that the candidate, and no one else, certify under penalty of perjury that the reports of who contributed to his/her campaign are accurate and complete. Now, just how in hell is anybody supposed to abide by both rules?

Hmmm. Yes, I can see the problem. So what do you actually do to avoid/evade the contradiction, Padre?

One is required to swear, under penalty of perjury, in a signed and witnessed document, that one has abided by the laws pertaining to public disclosure of campaign funding. One is not required to sign anything swearing that one has abided by the canons of judicial ethics. The folks who lose judicial elections are off the hook, in any event. No one in this state has ever initiated a disciplinary proceeding against a judge who ran a successful campaign, alleging that he/she violated the judicial canons by complying with the public disclosure law. Sometimes, one has simply to be pragmatic and pray that good sense will prevail, should one ever be called to account.

Pragmatism - the lesser of two evils, yes. One wonders, however, why whoever comes up with these rules doesn't weed out the contradictions. Unless, of course, it's a deliberate "gotcha" built in so that if they ever do want to hammer someone they've got a rod they prepared earlier.

Thanks for the explanation, padre.

My pleasure, Cap. I'm off for a few days to a judicial conference. Mind the store, eh?

Been to a few of them myself. At least, every conference I attend always boils down to a judicious choice between attending the conference sessions and getting admitted to the bar in the local pubs ...

Have fun!