June 2011
8 posts
who wants to explain to me what tumblr did while i was gone?
i leave you guys alone for two weeks and look what happens? new layout. :/
wordfeud now has a spanish version!
i’m going to fail at it but it’s gonna be so fun!
or should i say… voy a fracasarlo, pero va a estar divertidisimo!
link: scripps national spelling bee results. →
news.blogs.cnn.com
it’s no secret that i am a nerd and am interested in these sorts of things. so… yes. just a disclaimer.
anyway, spelling is interesting because on the surface, it appears that it’s straight memorization. but you must also have a knowledge of other languages and the way words are built within those languages, because of course almost nothing in a modern dictionary actually came from english. this adds a logical element to it as well.
for example, one of the example words in the article i linked to (coincidentally, the only one i could spell) is ‘pyopoiesis’, or the formation of pus (ewewew, my least favorite word). this is straight up greek: ‘pyo-’ meaning ‘pus’ and ‘-poiesis’ meaning ‘to make’. fun fact: the greek ‘poiesis’ is also the original base for ‘poetry’, although it had to go through some latin and old french along the way.
regardless, i could never have been a spelling bee champ. in our fifth grade class spelling bee, i misspelled ‘cavern’… not because i didn’t know how to spell it, i just tripped over myself when saying it aloud and reversed a letter. so i guess i was 2nd or 3rd place or something. but i clearly remember the feeling of defeat.
i mean, really. CAVERN.
isn’t linguistics interesting?
