Spelling Bee (#143; Topic L)

About a year ago, our daughter brought a video, Spelling Bee, for the family to view when she and her husband and our two grandchildren came for a visit. A documentary, the video showed several pre-teen or early-teen contestants making intense year-long preparations for the forthcoming contests, absorbing relentless parental expectations in the process, and facing incredible glare at the contest. I felt that the pressure on these youngsters was not commensurate with their potential benefits in subsequent years. Why spend every spare moment memorizing freakish words seldom encountered in life -- words with obscure national origin, unusual character combination almost impossible to pronounce? Reading a front-page account of another National Spelling Bee contest, concluded in the DC yesterday, in today's Washington Post strengthened my disdain. There were 274 contestants, aged 9-14. A 13-year-old from NJ won the championship (along with some $40,000 in prizes) for spelling, correctly in the bonus round (after her last competitor was eliminated), ursprache -- a word not in 90,000-entry Dictionary: Macmillan (intended for high-school students). It refers, according to the WP reporter, "to a reconstructed, hypothetical parent language, as Proto-Germanic." Her last competitor, a 14-year-old (judging from her name, she appeared to be a Chinese girl adopted by a Canadian family) was stopped by Weltschmerz, meaning "sentimental pessimism." A 12-year-old from Fort Worth TX (his photo and name suggesting an East Indian), last year's runner-up, was undone by eremacausis in the 7th round -- the word is not even in Funk & Wagnalls New College Standard Dictionary. Other words that stopped other contestants include: siphonapterology, causerie, attrahent, Echt, khanate, cholinesterse, coscinomancy, novearcal, khanate, attrahent, entelechy, and haramattan. I am ashamed to say that, even though I am almost 79 years old, I have never encountered any of these words before -- and probably never again.