We were spell bound watching the latest edition of the Scripps Spelling Bee on TV. Leave alone spelling the words correctly, there were very few words that we had even heard of. At times, it looked as if the spelling bee was not in English, rather, it was a test to measure the skill in languages like German, Italian, Latin, Yiddish and Hebrew. Children barely in fifth grade seem to have devoured entire dictionaries in multiple languages and tackled poly-syllabic words with ridiculous ease leaving us totally dumb-founded. And we thought, we knew the English language reasonably well!
What is popular in the US has to be imported to India so that we can have our own version of their favourite shows like "Who wants to be a millionaire". It is here that Scripps Spelling Bee would run into rough weather should it make its way to India.
America churns out boys and girls who are phonetically so uniform and perfect that they all speak and sound alike. They are programmed to pronounce every English word identically- when they murder Indian names, it is again in a consistent and predictable way. Hence, it is easy for the contestants to ask- "Any alternate pronunciations?" for any given word and get an answer which has possibly just one or two variations.
Indians in India cannot be slotted so easily; we have an individualistic streak in us. As common-place a word as "vegetable" will lend itself to multiple pronunciations and the questioner would have to reel out an entire list: "veg-tabl", "vegi-table", "bhej-table" and "vezi-table" to just name a few. Similarly, the contestant would also have a lot of variation in articulation and the judge would have to be alert to tolerate the differences- "yum-ai-yen-ai-yum-you-yet another yum" (for the word 'minimum') to give a fairly straightforward example.
"Nataka" was the only word that I could decipher in the latest edition of the Scripps Spelling Bee. The questioner mentioned that the word came from Sanskrit and had a fairly long explanation on what kind of drama came under that category. For once, we had an upper hand over the contestants and felt amused that the Jamaican kid should spend so much time over nataka! With due sympathy to the contestant, I really have a problem here. Who is to decide that nataka has to be spelt only as "nataka"? Why should it not be "naataka" or possibly "naataca" ? After all, a word in a different language can always be spelt in different ways when the sounds and letters of the alphabet are not exactly the same in the two languages.
Once we come to an Indian version of spelling bee, it would only be fair to include words from other regional languages. If nataka can be a valid word in Spripps, why not kinkartavya-vimoodh for the Indian equivalent ? Language of origin would be Sanskrit and adopted by Hindi. The meaning of the word would be "a state of helplessness or confusion". When it comes to pronunciation, we can come up with a pageful depending on which individual is saying it.
Or how about "urulaik-kizhangu" (potato in Tamil) or possibly "phulapakharu" (butterfly in Marathi)? We could well have a civil war of sorts with every state pushing for its favourite words to be spelt in English! Language jingoists will spit on their palms and gladly join the gladiatory fights at the Coliseums across the country!
Of course, we would have several coaching classes mushrooming (and a booming business for sure!) to cater to this new-found craze and the brightest kids would soon be learning Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, Konkani and Tulu words in English! Who knows? It could be a novel way to promote national integration!
The audience for the Scripps Spelling Bee is too mild mannered. An Indian equivalent show might want to reconsider whether parents should be in the audience at all. Over-anxious Indian parents (in India) are extremely vocal and don't mind giving their ward a mouthful (e.g. you duffer!) or even resorting to more violent means in full public glare, should their child stumble over a word.
Parents might even come up with ingenious ways to create a secret code between the child and themselves so that every word can be read off by the kid on stage by simply watching the parents' sign language! Also, Indian parents cannot stomach their ward's defeat so easily. The entire contest could come to a standstill and be rendered null and void with parents threatening that their ward got a raw deal and was eliminated controversially because everything was rigged! The spectre of "spell-fixing" would loom large and the media would have one more topic to beat to death.
We would soon have nation-wide protests, fasts unto death and vast sections of the public screaming- "No Scripps Spelling Bee...! Scrap the Spelling Bee!"
What is popular in the US has to be imported to India so that we can have our own version of their favourite shows like "Who wants to be a millionaire". It is here that Scripps Spelling Bee would run into rough weather should it make its way to India.
America churns out boys and girls who are phonetically so uniform and perfect that they all speak and sound alike. They are programmed to pronounce every English word identically- when they murder Indian names, it is again in a consistent and predictable way. Hence, it is easy for the contestants to ask- "Any alternate pronunciations?" for any given word and get an answer which has possibly just one or two variations.
Indians in India cannot be slotted so easily; we have an individualistic streak in us. As common-place a word as "vegetable" will lend itself to multiple pronunciations and the questioner would have to reel out an entire list: "veg-tabl", "vegi-table", "bhej-table" and "vezi-table" to just name a few. Similarly, the contestant would also have a lot of variation in articulation and the judge would have to be alert to tolerate the differences- "yum-ai-yen-ai-yum-you-yet another yum" (for the word 'minimum') to give a fairly straightforward example.
"Nataka" was the only word that I could decipher in the latest edition of the Scripps Spelling Bee. The questioner mentioned that the word came from Sanskrit and had a fairly long explanation on what kind of drama came under that category. For once, we had an upper hand over the contestants and felt amused that the Jamaican kid should spend so much time over nataka! With due sympathy to the contestant, I really have a problem here. Who is to decide that nataka has to be spelt only as "nataka"? Why should it not be "naataka" or possibly "naataca" ? After all, a word in a different language can always be spelt in different ways when the sounds and letters of the alphabet are not exactly the same in the two languages.
Once we come to an Indian version of spelling bee, it would only be fair to include words from other regional languages. If nataka can be a valid word in Spripps, why not kinkartavya-vimoodh for the Indian equivalent ? Language of origin would be Sanskrit and adopted by Hindi. The meaning of the word would be "a state of helplessness or confusion". When it comes to pronunciation, we can come up with a pageful depending on which individual is saying it.
Or how about "urulaik-kizhangu" (potato in Tamil) or possibly "phulapakharu" (butterfly in Marathi)? We could well have a civil war of sorts with every state pushing for its favourite words to be spelt in English! Language jingoists will spit on their palms and gladly join the gladiatory fights at the Coliseums across the country!
Of course, we would have several coaching classes mushrooming (and a booming business for sure!) to cater to this new-found craze and the brightest kids would soon be learning Bhojpuri, Kashmiri, Konkani and Tulu words in English! Who knows? It could be a novel way to promote national integration!
The audience for the Scripps Spelling Bee is too mild mannered. An Indian equivalent show might want to reconsider whether parents should be in the audience at all. Over-anxious Indian parents (in India) are extremely vocal and don't mind giving their ward a mouthful (e.g. you duffer!) or even resorting to more violent means in full public glare, should their child stumble over a word.
Parents might even come up with ingenious ways to create a secret code between the child and themselves so that every word can be read off by the kid on stage by simply watching the parents' sign language! Also, Indian parents cannot stomach their ward's defeat so easily. The entire contest could come to a standstill and be rendered null and void with parents threatening that their ward got a raw deal and was eliminated controversially because everything was rigged! The spectre of "spell-fixing" would loom large and the media would have one more topic to beat to death.
We would soon have nation-wide protests, fasts unto death and vast sections of the public screaming- "No Scripps Spelling Bee...! Scrap the Spelling Bee!"
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