Akeelah and the Bee

A good movie on an obscure topic: spelling tournament. Like all good stories, the pursuit (to win the tournament) is vividly elucidated. One will be awed by the difficulty of mastering spelling at tournament level and cannot help admiring those kids’ determination and hardwork trying to win it. The movie makes the national spelling bee contest no less glorious than the Olympics.

Of course, a good movie is about the characters. Akeelah’s search for fatherly relationship and friendship, her mother’s struggle as a single parent, the coach’s love for his deceased daughter, and other kids who compete with Akeelah. The movie is more than a tournament; it is about lives, friendship, and love.

But really? Spelling bee?

Pretty much only for English that spelling is a skill. Which other languages even worry about this matter? Chinese is non-spelling, so a quarter of the world population do not worry about this matter. Otherwise, words are spelled as they are pronounced. The movie offered a little explanation: there are so many roots for English words — Latin, French, German, etc. Somehow, this language chose to retain them all raw. After several hundred years of working into everyday conversation, new generations can no longer tell the origin of those words and simply must memorize them as is.

Mark Twain’s classic is worth repeating here.

A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter c would be dropped to be replased either by k or s, and likewise x would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which c would be retained would be the ch formation, which will be dealt with later.

Year 2 might reform w spelling, so that which and one would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish y replasing it with i and Iear 4 might fiks the g/j anomali wonse and for all.

Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants.

Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez c, y and x — bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez — tu riplais ch, sh, and th rispektivli.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

Mark Twain

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