I.C.E. Club – Madagascar

November 21st, 2008, there was an interesting Friday Talk session at American Cultural Center ( ACC) from 12:30 to 2 p.m. During that day ;the topic was ” The Challenge of Spelling in English”; presented by the Regional English language Officer Eran Williams.
How well can we master the english language. Is it enough just knowing how to speak; read ;and write. Sometimes even when we write we get stuck in writing some words. The problem is that we don’t know how to spell it correctly. So we end up ; misspelling it.
I guess ; we don’t really worry about that because there are different ways of checking the spelling; especially if we use the computer. It corrects are misspelled words automatically. Personally; I don’t think it’s really good to have the habit of using this system. It doesn’t really help us because we won’t remember the written mistake we did. Perhaps ; we’ll be repeating it over and over again.
Mr. Williams talked about a very famous competition called
” Spelling Bee” where contestants; usually children between the age 9 to 14 yrs old; are asked to spell english words. The concept is thought to have originated in the United States, and is usually perceived to be a solely English language practice. Although its only modern usage is in spelling bee, the word bee has historically been used to describe a get-together where a specific action is being carried out.
The earliest evidence of the phrase spelling bee in print dates back to 1825, although the contests had apparently been held before that year.
Spelling english words isn’t easy ; especially when the word isn’t spelled how it’s pronounced.
Why can’t we have our own Spelling Bee competition here in english or Malagasy or french. It won’t be a bad idea.