Californian 8th Grader Wins National Spelling Bee

Once again, the American Broadcasting Corporation aired the final of the Scripps National Spelling Bee in prime time last night. The winner of the 80th annual bee was Evan O’Dorney of Danville, California, a home-schooled 13-year old. He beat out Nate Gartke of Spruce Grove, Alberta, who was trying to become the first Canadian to win. As impressive as his victory was, young Mister O’Dorney appears more interested in this year’s math camp than in winning the spelling contest. He told the press after his triumph, “spelling is just a bunch of memorization.”

The second and final day of the competition began with 59 spellers remaining from the record 286 who began the competition on Wednesday. This was narrowed rather quickly to 15 finalists, 8 of whom retired after an unsuccessful first round. The next round saw two more spellers overcome by the oddities of English spelling. That left five, identified by CNN as “Evan; Nate; 14-year-old Joseph Henares, of Avon, Connecticut; 13-year-old Prateek Kohli of Westbury, New York; and 14-year-old Isabel Jacobson of Madison, Wisconsin. Joseph faltered on ‘aniseikonia’ (a visual defect), while Prateek missed ‘oberek’(a Polish folk dance) and Isabel was out on ‘cyanophycean’ (a kind of algae).” That left just Mr. O’Dorney and Mr. Gartke.

Had the two finalists gone through the entire list of 25 championship words, they would have been declared co-champions, but on the third word, Mr. Gartke added a superfluous “h” to the word “coryza,” a medical term for the symptoms of a head cold. This left Mr. O’Dorney an opening to win by correctly spelling “serrefine,” a small forceps, which he did. In doing so, he won $35,000 cash, a $5,000 scholarship, a $2,500 savings bond and a set of reference works.

Despite his obvious joy, he said that spelling was not really his top academic interest. He said, “My favorite things to do were math and music, and with the math I really like the way the numbers fit together. And with the music I like to let out ideas by composing notes -- and the spelling is just a bunch of memorization.” And sadly, he is right.

Bill Bryson wrote a marvelous book some years ago The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way that demonstrated exactly what Mr. O’Dorney said. The language underwent huge changes at the same time movable type arrived. Inconsistencies in pronunciation and spelling exist to this day because of that happenstance. One is pleased to note that Mr. O’Dorney can spell, but also that he has an interest in something more; that brings up a rather easily spelled word “polymath,” a person of great learning in several fields of study. Good for him.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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