((PKG)) SPELLING BEE -- JACQUES BAILLY
((Banner: The Joy of Spelling))
((Executive Producer: Marsha James))
((Camera: Kaveh Rezaei))
((Map: National Harbor, Maryland))
((Jacques Bailly, Spelling Bee Pronouncer))
So, the words that I’ve given in the Spelling Bee, I love sardoodledom. I think it is just a fun word. It is a useful word, and the speller who got it was Kennyi Aouad, and he thought it was just the funniest thing he had ever heard, and he couldn’t stop giggling, and I had to sort of reel him in and, you know, bring him down to get him to spell the word. That was a neat moment.
It may sound like a joke but I usually say I get a front row seat at the best event in the world.
My name is Jacques Bailly. I am the official pronouncer for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
As a child, I had a total fascination with language. I was trying to learn French all my life, I still am. The spelling bee sort of fed into that in sixth grade. I had Latin in high school. I have sort of drifted throughout my life. Just one thing would keep interesting me. And languages kept my interest all the way up till now.
I didn’t win any spelling bees in six and seventh grade, so I was really hungry and really wanted to win, and in eighth grade, that was when I won each spelling bee I was in until I won the big National Spelling Bee. In the National Spelling Bee, my final word was elucubrate.
I became involved with the National Spelling Bee because I wrote to them and I said, I don’t know if you remember me but I won the spelling bee ten years ago, and since then I have learned Latin and Greek and German and a lot more French, and I think I might have a skill set you might need for something or other. And it just so happened that they did need somebody to be associate pronouncer, which, at that point, was basically a chief fact checker at the Bee. I had a hidden mission, because I thought they were using words that were too hard. I thought that we don’t need words that nobody has ever heard of to get a champion. And at that point, believe it or not, we didn’t, but now they study so hard that we need the impossible words.
Most of us in our daily life might misspell accommodate. These kids are at an age where their memory is amazing. And they have time to devote to this and they love it. We need to find words like ‘ursprache’ because they have studied so much that you’ve got to look for the nooks and crannies.
So, these kids have a very deep knowledge and deep intuition, a ‘sprachgefühl’, a feeling for the language that is much broader and wider and more informed than most adults.
People think length matters for these spellers. For most of them it doesn’t. A long word is usually a lot easier. The four-letter words are often the hardest.
I have a particular view about human rights. I think the most fundamental one is the right to education and working with the Bee enables me to do something that I am able to do, to inspire people to educate themselves. My role is to help the spellers so it is very much sort of an affirmation and a role where I get inspired by them. So, it’s more than fun. It is really meaningful.
