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From: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: First National Education Association spelling bee (29-6-1908)
Date: Tue, 2 Jul 2024 21:43:37 +1200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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The Spelling Bee -- unique to the English-speaking world*, a ritual 
celebration of the intransigent irrationality of English orthography.
Noah Webster made his fortune with a "speller". He actually introduced 
some very sensible reforms, a few of which have survived in USEng.

*Crystal says the Dutch have spelling bees. Is this true?

The present series of "Nationals" began in 1925. I really enjoyed the 
documentary "Spellbound", about the 1999 competition, profiling a 
selection of the contestants from quite varied backgrounds. Fell in love 
with Nupur Lala, who was the winner; 25 years later she's doing fine, 
thankfully not as a professional speller.

https://www.instagram.com/scrippsnationalspellingbee/p/C3ArBC0MutN/

But even then there were some contestants being turned into little 
spell-bots by their ambitious parents. Stuffed with words like foie gras 
geese. This year I heard a short clip in which one of them spelled a 
whole lot of words I didn't know at incredible speed. That's 
pathological. But then, Americans take a similar approach to eating.

Further linguistic point: There used to be other kinds of "bees" -- 
sociable community gatherings to do some kind of work (quilting, 
husking...). OED from 1769, etymology obscure.