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Showerthoughts_Mod t1_je5eiww wrote

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spliffsandsunsets t1_je5rr3e wrote

I may be short a brain cell or two but which nation and which sport?

68

Single_Reporter_6369 t1_je5w0tt wrote

Being a kid and watching american movies dubbed or subbed I remember literally thinking "How the f is that supposed to he hard? Why is it a big deal?"

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jishnumenona t1_je61a6c wrote

Ironically the contests are won by kids of non native English speakers.

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Tnx4therealinfo t1_je66o4v wrote

I worked for a major corporation back in the days when we had offices instead of cubicles. I was a writer among other things. A friend and I would yell out stupid American English expressions. Most were idiomatic (not translatable) and it sure was fun. Spelling is a problem and spellcheck isn't helping me remember how to spell so I rarely use it.

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Halsti t1_je67n11 wrote

at least you dont have to wonder what gender "spelling" is. or wonder about the rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

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reditusername39479 t1_je6a314 wrote

English is not one language but 3 wearing a trench coat pretending to be 1

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domotor2 t1_je6f2vp wrote

I think English spelling is reasonable most of the time, and they make a national sport out of the few times it does get difficult.

Spelling bees would be very boring if the contestants were judged on their ability to spell the most commonly used English words!

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masshiker t1_je6jiw7 wrote

There is even disagreement on how many sounds are made by the five vowels. Some claim twenty.

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wakatenai t1_je6kgac wrote

Replying to jishnumenona (#2,454,709)

non native english speakers often end up having a much larger vocabulary and much better at writing papers.

because we learn our english from our parents and other people and how they talk, what words they use.

most non natives learn their english from teachers and books and more "official" english. our parents english isn't college paper english, nor are they dictionaries.

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AC2BHAPPY t1_je6kkjm wrote

... do they really not have spelling competitions in other languages

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noname942 t1_je6l5j8 wrote

Replying to domotor2 (#2,457,487)

> I think English spelling is reasonable most of the time

You sure about that? Every word is pronounced and spelled differently, letters don't match sounds 1:1 as they are supposed to, unlike in most other languages

−2

spolite t1_je6m5i5 wrote

Replying to Halsti (#2,455,992)

Yeah, I don't even know what gender spelling is...

But isn't that a German compound word (since noun clusters aren't a thing in German)?

Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

And also, aren't they made up a lot of the time and thus won't necessarily be found in the dictionary?

I mean... can German compound words be misinterpreted or "put together" incorrectly? And does it happen very often? Almost like... it's expected?

English isn't a phonetic language, it's just all over the place... A grown ass native speaker of English will screw up spelling stuff all the time and it's kinda just normal... normal to keep effing up our own language.

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antiquemule t1_je6pez5 wrote

Replying to AC2BHAPPY (#2,458,550)

In France we used to have a yearly dictation competition on prime time television - “the golden dictionaries”. You could tag along at home to see how you compared with the best.

Afterwards, Members of the very serious French academy would explain the obscure grammar rules that had to be followed to get the right answer.

Almost nobody got 100%. Riveting stuff!

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Im-shy-not-mean t1_je6rvq8 wrote

English is very weird

There their they're 2 two too to tutu Kansas and Arkansas pronunciation Don't get me started on the differe t meanings of word word "ass"

The list goes on.

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pewpewpewouch t1_je6s7nb wrote

As a Dutchman i can only say that i think English is much easier grammatically compared to Dutch.

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cabalavatar t1_je6sc48 wrote

I find it interesting that this is almost entirely a US phenomenon. Spelling bees do happen elsewhere in the Anglo world, but they're rare and rarely get any attention.

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Berloxx t1_je6vg8t wrote

Replying to spolite (#2,458,860)

To answer you questions, yes, yes, yes, yes, and lastly, meh, maybe, as a German native speaker I don't really have misinterpreted such words but that may not be the norm, don't know definitely.

You got it 🙂

2

CurrentIndependent42 t1_je6vnhu wrote

Replying to jishnumenona (#2,454,709)

Depends where. But the kids themselves are usually native speakers, and there’s not much difference in level of language level based just on parentage. Socioeconomic factors that effect general education level make far more of an impact when it comes to level of literacy.

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noname942 t1_je6w02u wrote

Replying to CarsonOrSanders (#2,459,971)

I'm speaking for Czech, Slovak and German, (they're not exactly perfect, but when compared to English... one could say they're very consistent and regular), according to wikipedia it's like that in quite a few languages (they're listing only languages with high degree of grapheme-phoneme correspondence, English is still orders of magnitude behind German and Slovak even if they're not in the list though)

Also, according to wikipedia, spelling bee exists in only 3 languages other than English

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CurrentIndependent42 t1_je6x80c wrote

Replying to HlTLERS_HIDDEN_CHILD (#2,457,312)

Nah the spelling is consistent. The length is hardly an issue than asking a kid to spell a whole English sentence: most of those words are compound nouns that might even be similar in English, just that English uses spaces or words like ‘of’ in between.

“Wow German has a single word for a law about the transmission of tasks for beef labelling supervision!”

I mean yeah, the equivalent of ‘beeflabellingsurveillancetasktransmissionlaw’. Or if we break it down twice, ‘beeffleshlabellingoverwatchingoutgivingoverdraggingslaw’.

It’s not like German has a trillions completely different ultra long words primed for this. They can just be produced as part of the grammar without the convention of spaces. A lot of compound nouns in English could be treated as single words in the same way going purely based on the actual spoken language.

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thedeebo t1_je6xexd wrote

Replying to noname942 (#2,458,663)

It's "reasonable" if you know when and where the word was picked up. For most of the weird stuff, you can blame the French. English was a regular Germanic language before 1066.

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wombey12 t1_je6y1g9 wrote

Replying to fantollute (#2,457,241)

>"We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."

-James Nicoll

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TroGinMan t1_je6y61p wrote

Wait until you learn French. I can't imagine what spelling bees are like there

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noname942 t1_je6ymwl wrote

Replying to thedeebo (#2,461,390)

> It's "reasonable" if you know when and where the word was picked up

Ok, let me stop you here, how tf am I supposed to know????? Does the average English speaker know? And even if so, English pronounciation has been evolving separately from spelling for centuries so it doesn't really matter.

−1

Beetsa t1_je6zcvy wrote

Replying to CurrentIndependent42 (#2,461,349)

And of course those examples are very artificial. At least in Dutch, such words would be correct, but not really used in practice. Compound words of more than 3 parts are rare in real speech. (Although U have used bijbelstudieleidershalfjaarsevaluatie) a couple of times.

2

DrZoidberg- t1_je6zmdv wrote

Replying to wakatenai (#2,458,534)

I'd say it's the same in reverse, at least for me.

My wife is Spanish and when I'm learning she says, "yeah it's like this. (speaks Spanish)" and I have to ask her "ok, but how would it be written in a book" because I don't want to sound dumb.

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Pikkornator t1_je71u5n wrote

Wait till you find out the whole language was based on old which spells.

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RadimentriX t1_je723qd wrote

Replying to wakatenai (#2,458,534)

Learned the basics in school and the vocabulary from yt, movies and music. English is one of the easiest languages to learn imo since most content one comes across in the web is english

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Cockalorum t1_je725pt wrote

Replying to Im-shy-not-mean (#2,460,115)

> Kansas and Arkansas pronunciation

Arkansas was part of the Louisiana Purchase, it was originally named by the French. It is a little surprising the Americans still pronounce it how it was originally named, given how everything between Detroit and New Orleans was named by the French, and for the most part Americans can't pronounce any of it.

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wakatenai t1_je726m8 wrote

Replying to DrZoidberg- (#2,461,861)

ya honestly a lot of americans who only speak english struggle a bit in english classes because they don't know essay english so they just write the paper how they talk and then get an F lol.

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j-r-m-b-v-n t1_je72eva wrote

As a french speaker , english is by far the easiest language to learn

0

NoWunder t1_je72il6 wrote

Nonsense: nonsensical: NonSeussical :on senses: no sentences : no se

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hacksoncode t1_je731vh wrote

Nah, it's not "unreasonable", it's "rich".

Sort of like how a crazy rich person is "eccentric".

0

thetomahawk42 t1_je73icz wrote

And international competitions can't exist because English spellings are different in some countries...

0

lankymjc t1_je74koc wrote

Only in the USA. Doesn’t happen in other English-speaking countries.

0

Canilickyourfeet t1_je75fmp wrote

See...I'm conflicted about this. Because every language has nuances that other languages don't - words which are very good at describing an emotion or thought.

The Russians have words that describe love differently than English. The Chinese have words that express sadness better than English does. But English feels very precise, and serves the purpose of expressing a very specific thought without verbosity. Granted, verbosity is what we're good at, very often without good reason, but I feel the extra words help hone in on the precise idea.

But then again, I circle back to Russian, where I can express a feeling or vibe that English words cannot hone in on in the same amount of words.

Its....weird...

What's the Russian expression for "Language is weird." And does it translate the idea in as few words? Genuine question, I'm still studying.

1

CarsonOrSanders t1_je75fsh wrote

Replying to noname942 (#2,461,080)

Your own wiki link says the spelling bee in Uganda alone has 10 different languages.

Also Hindi, one of the "3 other languages", is the third most spoken language in the entire world.

I guess what I'm getting at is...you were wrong.

0

thehermit14 t1_je75rd4 wrote

I'm British and blame Europe for all the influence, however I was born in Ireland and now live in the UK.

cough spelling bee US

1

TheKrzysiek t1_je76aik wrote

Arent those competitions a thing for other languages too? I think I saw one for polish

1

Single_Reporter_6369 t1_je76d85 wrote

Replying to spolite (#2,458,213)

In some languages, mine included, words are spelled exactly as they are pronounced for the most part. Sure, there are some similar sounds here that can make you confused with a letter or two, but not enough to make it a contest worthy skill.

1

araralc t1_je774g1 wrote

Replying to ox2bad (#2,457,703)

Sometimes i wanna cry when people seriously believe that "this German word doesn't exist in English" but in the end it's just a lot of words without a space in-between. I feel like a part of it is that language terms sometimes try to universalize things that are different from language to language. Some languages don't merge whole words (they might have words by merging, but it changes the structure of them) some merge a couple words, and some merge a lot of words. Some traditionally don't even have spaces at all.

I'd say English falls into the middle category. Starlight are two words in one. I haven't studied proper English grammar but if i remember correctly in my main language similar words (with whole merging) are considered neologisms and actually two words. In English i feel like it's considered one. Which draws a weird line when you consider German comparatively, and not individually.

2

thedeebo t1_je77o9x wrote

Replying to noname942 (#2,461,650)

Most native English speakers seem barely able to spell anything but the most basic words, so I doubt anyone besides weird nerds like me spend any time looking up word etymologies. We just memorize how to spell and speak, like anyone else does. We just have the advantage of having been totally immersed in it since infancy.

I'm sure you'd be unsurprised to learn that the evolution of English pronunciation is partially responsible for the weird spellings as well. The "gh" in "light" used to make the Germanic throat noise, but now it doesn't. Writing is a lot stickier than pronunciation. Everyone learned how to spell from writing that happened before pronunciation changed, so the spelling stuck around. The same thing happened in Romance languages when they started diverging from Classical Latin.

I could go on and on, but I'll save it for my ESL coworker who enjoys having esoteric conversations about linguistics.

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araralc t1_je77prz wrote

Replying to AC2BHAPPY (#2,458,550)

They do. I speak Brazilian Portuguese, which has way more uniform rules regarding spelling versus pronunciation, but there were spelling competitions. Idk how those are going nowadays. But they can be very easy if you are fluent in the language conventions. So usually who participates is on the younger side

1

spolite t1_je77tkp wrote

Replying to CurrentIndependent42 (#2,461,087)

I think I'm missing the part of my brain that I would need to understand this.

I still don't get it.

Like, what YOU said makes sense, but their wording... I just don't see how that wording can translate to what you said...

Oh well, I'll take the L on this one.

2

Petrichordates t1_je788sj wrote

Replying to wakatenai (#2,458,534)

Do you have a source for these claims? Because I'm finding the exact opposite (in other words, the result you'd expect)

> In contrast, non-native speakers living in English-speaking countries for many years learn 2.5 words a day, over twice the rate of native speakers. Even with that breakneck speed, researchers found that adults know on average 10,000-20,000 words less than their native counterparts, or a native English speakers’ 8- to 14-year-old vocabulary level. 

3

BRAX7ON t1_je78l88 wrote

Replying to Single_Reporter_6369 (#2,453,685)

What most people won’t tell you is that people who are good spellers here in the US are worshiped. We’re absolutely put on a pedestal. Actually it’s hard to go out in public when people know you can spell the way we can. It’s can be quite cumbersome.

1

spolite t1_je78t5i wrote

Replying to Single_Reporter_6369 (#2,463,318)

Is this right?: "I remember as a kid, I'd be watching american movies with English subtitles on and literally thinking "Why the f does the spelling have to be that hard? What's the point of making it so inconsistent??"

1

mental-floss t1_je7920g wrote

Rebuttal and checkmate: the people are the problem, not the language.

1

thedeebo t1_je79th9 wrote

Replying to Its_justanick (#2,463,883)

I have to limit what I explain because I could drone on for a while about the history of the English language. I've found just blaming the French to be the most efficient way of explaining the situation.

1

orbital_narwhal t1_je79zs6 wrote

Replying to araralc (#2,463,472)

> this German word doesn't exist in English

It’s very common that a language has a distinct word for a concept for which no distinct word exists in another language. But that’s not the same as composite words. Although sometimes composites take on a different or additional meaning than just the combination of their parts (see below).

I can think of a bunch of German words that really do not exist in English except for their loanwords:

  • Zeitgeist
  • Weltschmerz
  • Wanderlust
  • Fernweh
  • Zugzwang
  • Ohrwurm
  • sturmfrei
1

Mdork_universe t1_je7achm wrote

You think spelling is hard in English, try French! Half the letters in most words are silent!

1

orbital_narwhal t1_je7ahrj wrote

Replying to spolite (#2,458,860)

> Like, even if a native German speaker had never heard that compound word, they'd still understand it because it's just a combination of other words?

Usually yes but occasionally compound words take on a different or additional meaning than one might think based purely off the meaning of the compounds. Furthermore, homonyms are a thing in German and it’s not always immediately clear which meaning a compound carries in an unknown compound words. Also, some (compound) words take on new meanings over time when they’re often used metaphorically.

Examples: Weltschmerz, Ohrwurm, sturmfrei

1

CurrentIndependent42 t1_je7ashh wrote

Replying to spolite (#2,463,641)

I think the key part is they said they watched ‘American movies’ (presumably in English) ‘dubbed or subbed’, which means they’re probably not themselves first language English speakers.

So if they were watching some scene with a spelling bee (from context), and saw/heard the translation of the word in question, it would be a word in their own language, and probably not at all hard to spell, since in most languages apart from English (with a few exceptions), that’s the case.

1

araralc t1_je7bqrb wrote

Replying to orbital_narwhal (#2,464,136)

Yeah, usually the "this word doesn't exist in another language" is about concepts or other things that are culturally influenced. But somehow I've seen a bunch of those lists or mentions that are actually just a simple German composite that can be translated into other languages if you don't make "it gotta be a single word" a rule. So like, completely translatable stuff. I always saw those and would think it was like saying "starlight" isn't a word in Portuguese because "luz estelar" are two words, but with bigger merges.

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ThomasRedstone t1_je7d6tk wrote

As an English person, I can tell you with absolute certainty that spelling is not a national sport.

1

bigmac22077 t1_je7ej9n wrote

Replying to wakatenai (#2,458,534)

I used to work with South Americans all the time at a ski resort as they would come in on j1 visas. They always used “big” words where I’d think, you’re struggling to speak English right now, and you came up with that word?! It’s clearly from not learning the language through speech.

2

Samurai_Banette t1_je7q3hz wrote

Replying to Petrichordates (#2,463,741)

I think the idea is native speakers have practical mastery of the language, with a huge bias towards words that have common use. If its a second language, outside of the words you absolutely need to get by the words you pick up might be more obscure or academic.

For example: Estalogical vs Vestigial. Native speakers will all know vestigial due to biology class, while a second language learner would have no bias on which to learn because neither are particularly relevent. They might pick up Estalogical instead, sound really smart, and no one would realize they never learned vestigial because its not used enough.

1

spolite t1_je84al1 wrote

Replying to CurrentIndependent42 (#2,464,300)

OK, so the commenter was watching 'Akeelah and the Bee' subbed and dubbed in their language and the words Akeelah had to spell were simple in the commenter's language so they didn't understand what the big deal was?

1