Sukanya Roy Wins 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee

[Vehl]

Sukanya Roy is the champion at the 84th Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The Indian-American from South Abington, Penn. took the top place from runner-up Laura Newcombe when she correctly spelled the word 'cymotrichous' – which relates to wavy hair.

Sukanya, 14, will take home more than $40,000 in cash and prizes. She is now the fourth consecutive Indian-American to take the title at the Scripps spelling bee, and the ninth within the past 13 years.

more here
http://abcnews.go.com/US/sukanya-roy-wins-84th-scripps-national-spelling-bee/story?id=13749610

Final round participants




Congratulations Sukhanya, and other contestants! It's the participation that matters, winning or losing is secondary.

[stevedeshazer]

1. +1. I love this stuff.

My daughter won the state spelling contest in 1998.

Long live spelling nerds!

[Vehl]

4. thats cool!

I was never good enough to get into spelling contests...lol was more interested in playing cricket when I was a kid :P

But I never cease to be amazed by the skills of the participants...doubly so when they also employ linguistic science to predict how an unknown word might be spelled based on its language of origin.

[lonestarnot]

2. Can we give him a direct line to my posts?

:7

[Vehl]

5. we need them to make a better auto correct.lol

Sometimes I think Autocorrect is playing a major part in lowering our skills...I hardly made a spelling mistake by the time I got out of HS, but dozens of college papers and word-spell check later, I can definitely say that my spelling skills have eroded.

[woo me with science]

7. I have never used a spell checker

and can't imagine ever getting used to using one. I have always figured that I am human, and if I make a mistake, I own it.

I am always amazed when people talk about being extremely dependent on them.

[Vehl]

10. It was built in, into MS Word

Usually it starts highlighting errors in red as you start typing. Even though I started out not needed the spell checker, I realized (as many do) that its faster to type an incorrect word than spend one or two seconds thinking about the correct spelling of it...because we can always right click the underlined word, and choose the correct spelling MS Word lists for us. However this time-saving feature had a huge drawback...we eventually stopped caring too much about spelling and started typing as fast as possible...correcting the spelling only when we have finished all the typing. The result is a deterioration of spelling skills. I'm pretty good at spelling..but not as good as I used to be. I guess this is akin to obesity increasing in direct proportion to availability of mass produced items(less labor intensive)

[jberryhill]

3. This is why English is a silly language

Honestly, in how many languages is it common to have contests and awards for being able to render it in characters?

[Vehl]

6. :))

As a non native English speaker, I was quite appalled at how haphazard English is compared to the languages I was fluent in. English grammar has so many "special cases" and other anomalies/abnormalities to take into consideration..

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. All those Spelling bee movies made me hate this shit

The way they drill these kids for this nonsense is close to abusive.

Who the fuck cares if you can spell logorrhea, after all?

Most of this shit is rote repetition, disguised as learning. You want to challenge 12 year olds? Have them read Kant. Spelling drills are stupid.

[MattBaggins]

9. This has to be fake

This girl is from a public school which we have been assured can only produce burger flippers and drug addicts.

Well congratulations to her for a job well done anyway.

[Vehl]

11. Yep, the Public school thing is important

A good reply to those who think that the public school system sucks.