I spent my evening yesterday studying how to pronounce 500 words.

My wife periodically stuck her head into the den, listened to me pronounce a word, read the definition and use the word in a sentence, and move on to the next one.

She’d shake her head, give me a weak smile, then go back to watching television by herself.

Tonight, I’m the official pronouncer at the Monroe County Spelling Bee.

The pressure is on. I’ve watched spelling bees before, and I know how important they are to the boys and girls who won their local school bees and advanced to the county bee - and to their parents.

And I know how much pressure that puts on the pronouncer and the judges to get it right.

When I was asked to do this job, I agreed immediately. It sounded like fun. That was before I looked at the word list.

Some of those words are not only tough to spell, they’re a tangle of syllables requiring improbable sounds to come from the mouth.

I’ve been a journalist for 30-plus years. I make my living with words. But there are words on the list I’ve never heard of.

The English language is rich and diverse. We’ve borrowed words from many languages, and we spell and pronounce them in crazy ways.

All of which only goes to make the students’ prowess in spelling that much more amazing. After all, I only have to learn how to pronounce them.

They have to spell them.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 at 6:31 am and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.