Spelling As a Competitive Sport

People who know me well will know that I am a bit of a sports junkie. As in, I am the kind of person who will be happy to put ESPN on in the background, and I am someone who follows a wide variety of sports - football, tennis, basketball, golf, and even more random ones like table tennis and badminton. ESPN has been extending their coverage to such non-traditional sports as pool, snooker, bowling and darts (all of which I must admit I do rather enjoy watching as a kind of guilty pleasure), but even I was taken aback when I turned on the TV the other evening to be confronted with the ultimate clash of the titans, 48 individuals battling it out for the ultimate grand prize: the US National Spelling Bee trophy.

Traditionalists ("It ain't a sport unless you sweat while doing it") will laugh, but there was something rather captivating about seeing 13 and 14 year olds (some as young as 9) puzzling out words which were, quite honestly baffling, even to those who believe they have a considerable grasp of the English language. That spelling is a competitive sport, as unlikely as that might sound, was soon evident from the contestants.

Many of them were familiar with Latin and Greek root and derivatives, better to ensure not being caught out by tricky words; a number of them were making their second, third or even fourth appearance at the National Spelling Bee, with previous experience seen as a bonus (is experience a key factor, well just ask any golfer or tennis player yet to win a major). Nerves were evident, unsurprising given the one mistake and you're out see you next year format of the competition. It was often tension filled and pressure packed - there was even a psychologist on hand to counsel the distressed, some visibly distraught after they were literally "rung out" by the dreaded bell, signifying they had made a misstep puzzling out some fiendish word or another.

Just how difficult was it? I am not a great speller, laziness and Microsoft Word spellcheck has seen to that, but I do think I have a fair vocabulary. By the third and fourth elimination rounds (when the difficulty was increased) I would have probably gotten between a third to a half of the words wrong. This put me just about par for the competition as a whole. No doubt, these were 13 and 14 year olds, so I should feel ashamed at my ignorance, but in my defense, some of the contestants admitted to more or less sleeping with a Miriam-Webster by their bedsides, and spending arduous amounts of preparation in advance of the competition.

That said, I have kept a little notebook which I have filled with puzzling and interesting words that I had not previously come across. I have always meant to check out their meanings and etymologies, if only to expand my vocabulary. I have also meant to get to the roots of language, literally and metaphorically, to actually learn the building blocks (what is an adverb, what on earth is a past participle?) of grammar. Perhaps watching the US National Spelling Bee will inspire me to renew my efforts in this.

So 'Nice'

I had an English Literature teacher who absolutely banned the use of certain four letter words in his class. Contrary to what you might think, it was not the common swear words or expletives that would set him on edge it was the four letter words 'nice' and 'good'. He taught a class on practical criticism, so it was common for him to hand out poems, or extracts from plays, have us read it and then, inevitably ask us what we thought of the piece. The fastest way to draw his ire was to reply that you found the poem 'nice' or that the poet's use of language was 'good'.

The problem with saying that something is 'nice', particularly a poem, is that to a degree, you aren't really saying much of anything at all. 'Nice' and 'good' are words that have been more or less leached of any specific context or meaning to the point where they only express generalities. Saying that something is 'nice' probably gives it a certain sense of warm fuzziness, but in practical criticism, and I would argue for much of writing, what is needed is a greater degree of precision.

I was reminded of my English Lit teacher's one man war on 'nice' when I encountered this extract from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which I am currently reading. Catherine Moreland, the main character of the story had just described a book she was reading as 'nice' only to be rather impertinently asked by her friend Henry Tilney if she meant its binding. When asked why she should not describe a book as nice if she finds it so, Tilney replies:

"Very true, and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! it is a very nice word indeed! - it does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement; - people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word"

I rather agree. Indeed, I could have hardly put it more nicely myself! Or perhaps, what I meant to say is I could not have put it more succintly, accurately, or comprehensively myself. So the end result of this post? Perhaps, using the word 'nice' is well, not so nice after all!

Test Your Vocab and Feed the World

I randomly decided to consolidate a list of random and unfamiliar words I had been accumulating for a number of years now. Most of these are words culled from books that I have read, and are for the most part words that I was unfamiliar with at the time I encountered them. I realised that a fair few had been jotted down more than once (showing some consistency in my lack of knowledge) though I am embarrassed to say that at one point I was unfamiliar with what a bollard was among other things.

I decided to consolidate the words alphabetically in a new notebook to make things neater and more organized, and I fully intend to continue adding to the list as fascinating new words (or indeed familiar words that I find particularly interesting) come to my attention.

As a sample of the more difficult ones on my list I offer the following: argillaceous, torquemada, oriflamme, ormolu, lachrymose, mountebank, ecchymosis, concatenate, asafoetida, amyloid, brachycephelic, chilbain, clerihews, gnar, jowse and mastaba.

My sister came home to find me compiling the list and promptly directed me to a fascinating site called FreeRice. The concept is wonderfully simple. You are given a word and you have to guess the meaning from four options. For every correct answer, twenty grains of rice is donated to the UN World Food Programme (donated as payment in kind for banner advertising). Your vocab level is tracked as you answer more questions - you get harder words as you get a string of correct answers and easier ones when you get an answer wrong.

The site is quite addictive, particularly if you love words, and the time-wasting is offset by the fact that you know you are doing it for a good cause. Spending time on the site has underlined to me how vocabulary is fundamentally built on roots words and familiar linkages. For example, stentor might initially seem unfamiliar, but thinking of the word stentorian, would help you to choose the option "loud voiced person" as the meaning. Similarly, bacciferous would be puzzling, but remembering that Bacchus was the Greek god of wine would help you to choose "produced from grapes" as the right answer.

Orwell on Writing Well

I am currently reading a number of books on the usage (and abusage) of the English language, including Between You and I by James Cochrane and Troublesome Words by Bill Bryson not to mention browsing through the bible on language usage that is Fowler's Modern English Usage. The former two are amusing A-Z lists of the most common mistakes in usage, spelling and punctuation.

Perhaps nobody has summarized things as well as George Orwell, in his essay titled "Politics and the English Language" (included as an appendix in Cochrane). He memorably "translates" a passage from the book of Ecclesiastes (King James Version) into modern English. The original passage read:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Orwell suggests that in modern English the same passage might well read:

Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

Orwell readily admits that the above was an exaggeration, but anyone who has encountered modern business and management speak, or legal jargon, would wince in sympathy. He also believes that sloppy, unclear language is not only representative of sloppy and unclear thinking, but that it leads to more imprecise thinking.

At the core of bad writing, according to Orwell, is staleness of imagery and lack of precision. Bad writing is characterised by two things: the writer is unable to express his meaning or inadvertently means something different to what he has written; or the writer is indifferent to whether his words mean anything at all.

The first of the two is due to sloppiness and can be corrected. The second, in my opinion, is by far the more dangerous and pernicious, and can be seen in the management and business speak that is growing increasingly pervasive today. It is stale, imprecise and incomprehensible precisely because its writers have nothing to say to begin with.

While we might bemoan the fact that the English language is in a bad way (people are almost perpetually doing so, and are thus honoured with the title of pedant), is there anything that we can do about it? Orwell suggests the following six simple rules that govern clear language:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print (i.e avoid cliches)
2. Never use a long word where a short word will do (i.e. avoid pretentiousness)
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out (i.e. avoid longwindedness)
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent (i.e. avoid jargon)
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

That I reckon is pretty good advice. I hope to bear it in mind in the entries ahead.