Re: First National Education Association spelling bee (29-6-1908)

On 2024-07-02 14:06:40 +0000, Christian Weisgerber said:

On 2024-07-02, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
 

The Spelling Bee -- unique to the English-speaking world*, a ritual

 I'm pretty sure there have been spelling contests on French TV.

Definitely. The late Bernard Pivot ran a very popular series of progammes called Les Dicos d'Or around 30 years ago. Errors in French spelling proved to depend a lot on the obscure rules of gramamatical agreement that plague efforts to write in French. One episode annoyed me. It was filmed in Strasbourg and one question concerned someone who had taken a trip on the île. Now, anyone who doesn't know Strasbourg will naturally interpret it as île. People who do know Strasbourg will know that there is no island that could be relevant, and that the local river is the Ill.
My recollection is that the series was inspired by a dictation constructed by Prosper Mérimée in the 19th century, so the idea is far from being modern.
I don't think that sort of programme would work in Spanish, where a lot would depend on possibilities of confusion between b and v and between y and ll. Similarly with German. (I had just one year of German at school, but right from the beginning I could do a dictation with almost no errors, despite not understanding what the text was saying.)

 Basically any language where getting from pronunciation to spelling
involves a lot of ambiguity is a candidate.
Thai? Chinese??

Spelling to pronunciation works well in French (much better than in English), apart from a few oddities like poêle and oignon; pronunciation to spelling, on the other hand, is just as bad as in English.
--
Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly in England until 1987.