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Today I attended an annual IBM spelling bee as a spectator since my three siblings were participating. For the purpose of “professionalism”, the company asked several ACC English professors to come in and be the pronouncers for the event. I very distinctly remember a Ms. Garcia, who had screwed me over five years ago when I had participated in the spelling bee for the first and last time with the word “samba”, which she successfully exaggeratively pronounced as “sohm-buh”. I had had no previous experience with the word, so naturally I spelled it wrongly. (Ironically, a month afterwards I started seeing the word everywhere - in books, songs, the Internet… in fact, I can now successfully name no less than five songs with the “samba” in the title). But I digress.

The spelling bee was run very efficiently, and for that I am grateful. What I did not appreciate, however, was the lack of proper enunciation during the pronunciation of the words at hand. Half of the children who were disqualified sincerely did not know how to spell their words, but the other half were screwed over by lack of clear pronunciation on the part of the ACC professors. A few examples:

Note: official dictionary methods of pronunciation guide are not used below since many people don’t know how to read them (you should all learn, it’s a nice skill to know); instead I opt for typical everyday transliteration

Interim: instead of the more true-to-Latin “in-ter-im” with a short i as in “into”, they opted for “in-ter-um”
Latency: this one was horrifying given as “lay-n-see” instead of “lay-ten-see”. I’m sorry, Professor, did you not see the T blatantly sitting in the midst of those letters?
Patio, kettle, totem, metal: I have a huge gripe about not enunciating T’s because in some cases (such as “metal”) the usage of the colloquial soft T (which sounds somewhat halfway between a T and a D) could very well change the word itself. The pronunciation for these words were given as “pad-ee-oh”, “ked-dul”, “toe-dum”, and “meh-dul”.
Anvil: was pronounced exaggeratively as “an-vul”, when clearly I see an I sitting between the V and the L - try “an-vil” next time?
Prayer: contrary to popular belief, this word has TWO syllables. Yes, that is right; it’s properly enunciated as “pray-er”, not “prair” (rhyming with “flair”).
Decorative: as with “prayer”, the habit seems to be syllable-dropping; pronounced today as “deck-cruh-tiv”. Sorry, but I don’t spell it “decrative” - perhaps you should actually acknowledge the fact that there’s an “or” sound present? (”deh-cor-uh-tiv” or even “deh-ker-uh-tiv”)
Intervention: is there just a general confusion between the soft “sh” and “ch” sounds? This was the word that my youngest sister was disqualified for; they pronounced it “in-ter-vin-chin”. Excuse me, but last time I checked, the -tion suffix made the “shun” sound, and the second E in this word is meant to be sounded as the short e sound, as in “egg”.

Had either of my theatre directors been present, they would have thrown a fit. I know I was certainly frowning in my seat as child after child fell victim to badly pronounced words. As such, I dedicate this entry to the advocation of proper pronunciation/enunciation. I realize that the restrictions of speed and efficiency in a typical everyday setting doesn’t allow for or require extremely precise enunciation; I am not asking that we speak exaggeratively in informal situations (such as merely hanging out with friends at the mall, etc.), nor do I request that high school students over-enunciate all of their words in an attempt to sound like a stuck-up prick to their English teachers. However, it is a different case in situations where it actually matters by influencing the learning of younger children: for example, I believe it is important to instill proper pronunciation skills at a young age so that students are not confused or misled by the colloquial American accent when it is applied to English words. For a child to hear “pad-ee-oh”, common English phonetics dictates that they should spell it “padio” (which of course is incorrect). The proper method to introduce words like this at a young age, then, is to emphasize the T in “patio” (”pat-ee-oh”) so that the children can recognize and remember the correct spelling patterns.

Aside from the classroom, I should think that a spelling bee is another pretty damn important place for proper enunciation, as it is one where the success of the speller relies on their skills with phonetics. If the words are so mangled that the application of proper English phonetics is impossible (”latency”, anyone?), then quite obviously those in charge are doing something wrongly.

Perhaps I’m just bitter (”bit-ter”, not “bid-der”) since the importance of proper enunciation has played a very important part my entire life: I have been participating in oration contests and theatrical productions since the age of five, and if one does not enunciate properly in those situations, one is as good as gone (yes, I learned this the hard way after losing miserably in my first oration contest and being yelled at by directors). I’ve also participated in spelling bees since the age of five and have always appreciated it when the pronouncers spoke loudly, clearly, and properly. I suppose I’m just accustomed to recognizing the important that phonetics plays in language skills and would really hope that others could do the same.

As a digression, I am really surprised at the level of spelling skills of the average middle-schooler. I’m one of those old-timers that believes that the younger children of this generation and beyond will eventually get screwed over as they rely more and more on computerized spell-checkers and grammar-checkers (and for the record, I never use either; spell-check is cheating ;D). In addition, the phonics taught in public schools (if any at all) are very subpar in comparison to many curricula used in private and home schools (for example, A Beka, which I grew up with - in my opinion the BEST curriculum for phonics, hands down; and I’ve had my run-ins with more than a few). Even in my high school, I have been thoroughly appalled more than once by the spelling and usage skills of my fellow classmates (I’m -still- trying to explain the you’re/your ordeal to a few of them) - no decent English paper will be taken seriously if it is too riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors; it’s high time we started training students properly at a young age to do things right. For example, I remember transferring out to public school in 7th grade and receiving an awkward shock that members of my advanced English 7th-grade class didn’t even know what interjections, indirect objects, and antecedants were (parts of speech). I could forgive them for not knowing how to diagram sentences (mm, how I miss doing those), but no knowledge of interjections at a 7th-grade level? Seriously? And what is this nonsense about not knowing the proper usage of a semicolon (which, if you haven’t noticed, happens to be my favourite mark of punctuation)?

Pardon the large digression to the realm of grammar and usage - this happens to be a topic I am rather passionate about and could go on speaking about for hours. But I suppose I shall move towards wrapping this entry up by touching base on how the vocabulary level also shocked me. There was one ditzy-looking blonde girl (8th grade) present who had never even heard of the word “Pegasus”, and people were constantly asking for definitions of the most commonplace words possible, such as “spruce” and “enchilada”. No, I kid you not - the eldest boy participating asked for the definition of “enchilada”. You know, if you live in Texas and don’t know what an enchilada is, shame on you. Go eat at Chuy’s.