US spelling bee final a red-letter day for its winners

Like prized fighters swapping punches, Vanya Shivashankar and Gokul Venkatachalam matched each letter for letter, word for word.

The other eight finalists in the 88th Annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, aged 11 to 14, were knocked out on words such as iridocyclitis (inflammation of the iris), minhag (a Jewish custom) and cerates (an Egyptian snake). (An Irish word, "crannóg," was correctly spelt during Thursday night's final, minus the fada.)

Shivashankar (13) of Olathe, Kansas and Venkatachalam (14) of Chesterfield, Missouri, were still swinging after nine words between them in a head-to-head. Then the competition's veteran announcer Dr Jacques Bailly (now in his 13th year) sprung "sprachgefuhl" on Gokul.

Gasps rang out from the crowd in National Harbor, Maryland. Venkatachalam asked for the definition: "Sensibility to conformance or divergence of the established usage, as in form or idiom of a language."

“S-P-R-A-C-H-G-E-F-U-H-L,” said Venkatachalam, to cheers from the crowd, sensing there was no word going to land a blow.

Shivashankar’s methodical approach involved asking about the word’s origin, different pronunciations, the definition, and for the word to be used in a sentence.

This last bit brought the funniest moments. Asked to use “bruxellois”, Dr Bailly told Shivashankar: “Much to the annoyance of the bruxellois behind the counter, Rusty Instagrammed a photograph of every piece of chocolate in the shop.”

Answering correctly

On each word Shivashankar spelled out the imaginary with a finger on her hand. They continued answering correctly until Venkatachalam was told if he answered the next correctly, they would be crowned co-champions. “Nunatak? Nunatak,” said Venkatachalam.

“N-U-N-A-T-A-K,” he spelled, without seeking any clarification. The crowd erupted and the stage exploded in a cloud of ticker-tape. They won $35,000 (€32,000) each. Shivashankar’s winning word was scherenschnitte, the art of decoratively cutting paper. “Even I lost my cool at the end,” said Venkatachalam, whose laid-back demeanour drew laughs during the final. “I feel like when you relax you do better.”

He said his win was the “culmination of all the hard work of the past six years”.

From 11 million participants to 283 who made the three-day finals, Vanya and Gokul emerged winners. It’s the fifth time since the bee began in 1925, launched to improve spelling and increase vocabularies, that there have been joint winners, and the second year in a row.

This is an all-American spectacle – it is broadcast live on sports channel ESPN and the audience is screened through metal detectors.

It is dominated by children of Indian descent. They have won eight years in a row and all but four of the last 16. Seven of this year’s 10 finalists were Indian-American.

Paige Kimble, the bee's director, addressed nasty racial comments on social media made after last year's win. Asked on Thursday whether any "Americans" made the finals, she said: "Yes, they're all Americans."

Asian immigrants

Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California Berkeley, said: “Immigrants in general, particularly Asian immigrants, tend to be very achievement-oriented and hard-working.

“It takes a huge amount of dedication and time, particularly when you get to that masters level. It is a skill.”

The bee might show off individual skills but the US education system still has some rounds to go. A recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report found that of 33 countries, the US had the fourth-highest share of young people with low literacy.

This was Venkatachalam's third year participating. He came third last year. His father Chalam told The Irish Times he worked at spelling every evening, and up to eight hours on weekends.

Shivashankar and her sister Kavya, the 2009 champion, are the only siblings to win the bee. Competing for the fifth time, Vanya studies roots of words and etymological patterns. She was able to spell “thamakau” (a Fijian canoe), one of the words she struggled with in Thursday’s final, because she had studied Hawaiian words and recognised the “au” sound, she said.

Nunberg describes these as stunt words. Misspelling words such as “separate” and “definite” shows insufficient education, he says, but even the most educated will struggle with another large class of words.

“It has mostly to do with visual memory: did you notice that ‘bellwether’ doesn’t have an ‘a’ or ‘minuscule’ has two ‘u’s?” he said.

Venkatachalam’s winning word, nunatak, means “a hill or mountain completely surrounded by glacial ice.” These impressive Indian-American kids certainly sit on higher ground when it comes to spelling.