The Great American Spelling Bee with Gabe Henry

Welcome to your on about with me today is Gabe Henry and we are going to talk about

spelling and I'm going to sound like Pepperan and I'm much too cool for seventh grade. Gabe, thank you so much for coming back. Thank you so much for having me, Sarah. You were on to talk about the movement to standardize American spelling when we last talk to you and about your book. And what is your wheelhouse I guess? What kind of a correspondence are we going to name you

“for the show? Would you like to be the spelling correspondence? Is that a little bit too unfun sounding?”

I would be so honored. You know, I think ever since I lost my spelling bee in third grade, I've been trying to process my trauma in a really healthy and constructive way and I think being your spelling correspondence will do the trick. Okay, perfect. And I also will confess at the start that I got dinged on. I think a fifth grade, that is spelling test exactly but I think we just had to like write the names of the states and I had been reading the Dear America book about the organ trail

which spelled Missouri, Missouri and I got a point off for that and I'm so a little sad about it and that was in 1999. So, you know, I spent much of this past year speaking to different audiences

about language and about spelling and I always like to begin with an icebreaker so I'll say to the

audience, raise your hand if you remember what word you won on or lost on in your childhood spelling bee and no matter the city, no matter what age I'm speaking to, the hands always shoot up in the air and everyone has a story and there'll be old ladies who will share how they misspelled, you know, the word beautiful when they were seven years old in the 1940s and they're still really angry about it because who's just so unfair, you know, Billy got

easier words. Yeah and there's something, I mean we talked when we had you on last about what was your description of the English language, I guess there's a few good ones but like a bunch of different

languages in a trench coat was one. Yeah, eight languages in a trench coat. Yeah and it comes through

in the spelling and I guess, yeah, what are we talking about today and what site of childhood intense feelings are we about to go into? Well, I mean to start, I love how spelling is such this, it's a universal subject that everyone has some strong emotions about or frustration or childhood trauma and everyone has this like core, shared childhood memory of standing on stage

“and trying to spell it word, at least in this country and I mean that's what got me interested in”

the history of spelling bees and why they're common in America but not in other countries and how became this big national event. So the way I want to start and I apologize ahead of time but I'm going to put you on the spot. Okay. So I want to start by giving you a mini spelling bee. Eredo ciclitis, okay let's go. And I really want to set the stage for this so I want you to feel what it's like to be inside one of these national competitions. I want to want you to be nervous.

I'm already nervous. This is working. Yeah. So I want you to close your eyes and picture yourself on stage in front of thousands of people and you have these bright hot spotlights being down on you. There are television cameras point that you there's a placard around your neck that says Sarah with an H on it. I hope. Yeah, I like it when you like order at Starbucks and they're like with an H and I'm like oh I'll know what you're saying if you say it without it but anyway.

Yeah, I actually I wanted to ask you that just for a tangent. I realize the other day that I have four people in my phone named Sarah and two of them spell it with an H and two of them spell it without an H. So I'm curious how often do people miss spell your name without the H? Not super often.

“And also second question. Yeah. Do you harbor a lifelong resentment of Sarah's without an H?”

Well, okay. So I would like to say no and I don't think it's resentment exactly but when I meet another Sarah I'm like whether with that an H and if they say with I'm like which is correct. And if they're without then I'm like oh that's nice because I feel like if and this is this maybe relates to the whole spelling thing because I feel like I don't know many if not most people feel that like words feel differently based on how they're spelled even if they're pronounced

the same in an odd way and I'll take a Sarah without an H at Starbucks but if someone has been walking through their entire life as a Sarah without an H, I do feel that their life has been affected and there is slightly different person than a Sarah with. Worse slightly worse than you.

write and their family like saved up in extra few minutes and they used it to play boggle. I have no

idea like the same as they're living like. It's completely different. It's like when people are like Portland's like Seattle, right? I'm like no they could not be more different and then I'm like they're the two most similar American cities probably like you could not find a city more similar and yet for that reason it seems completely different. It sounds like you have a healthy relationship with Hlessera's. I know one particular Hlessera who will just stare daggers into your soul

if you add an H to her name. And that's fair she's she's not she's not named Sarah she's named Sarah

“and that's different. Like I remember in serendipity Kate back in sales of Sarah but then you see”

it's spelled without an H and I was like well it's completely different. That's not really Sarah. But there's no other way to spell Gabe that I've ever heard of unless you add like a silent H after they cheap but that would just be mental. That would be insane. So so you're on stage you got your plaque around your neck spelled correctly with an H. Thank God. They're television cameras point that you your family is out there in the crowd somewhere back home while your your classmates and

your teachers are watching on TV. I guess in the scenario you're like 12 so picture 12 year old Sarah. Oh man. And then in front of you just below the stage there's a panel of judges kind of American idle style and in the middle of the panel is the main judge he's known as the pronounceer and you step up to the microphone and he says death or exile I guess. And he says you are not moving on to Hollywood. So you step up to the microphone and the pronounceer says Sarah your word is okay now for this

scenario I had some choices. I thought about going with some ridiculously long anti-distance establishment. Terry and his some type word with a thousand syllables but I thought no I'll go easier on Sarah and I decided instead to go with just a simple two syllable word. So again your on stage room is quiet. The pronounceer looks at you and says Sarah your word is fuchsia. Fuchsia. And then from what I've seen on TV you can like kind of stall by being like

can you use it in a sentence? Can I have a derivation? Yeah. And you can ask me all those questions. Ooh okay can you use it in a sentence? Sure. Sorry I found this very dramatic. I'm very prepared. Do my homework. Um I have this quote here from Henry Miller. Very dramatic quote.

So here it is for in Mexico ladies and gentlemen it's always high noon and what glows is fuchsia

“and what's dead is dead. Oh Henry. Um not that one and um can I have the derivation?”

The derivation is German. Ooh okay so I'm like positive that I can spell fuchsia but simply from the like mental exercise of imagining being in the situation I'm like can I though? Okay fuchsia fuchsia. That is correct. Yeah I thank God I'm still on it. I'm genuinely amazed. Thank you. We never did spelling b's actually that I can remember when I was growing up or spelling contest at school so I kind of and I was like a pretty good hey we got a cat and I was a pretty good

spelling um I think just because I read so much with which then of course meant that I would spell

things like Missouri but I was always I don't know I always wanted to have this spelling be

experienced and I think it would have freaked me out pretty much instantly but it would have been I don't know this was nice this was my got to do the thing I didn't get to do. Well there it is you just had the experience it's over you won. Wow yeah I guess there were no other contestants. We only had one word prepared and we only invited one person. Yeah you know what I'll take it I'm happy with it. Well I will give you some more praise which is that I've asked dozens of people

had a spell fuchsia that's kind of like my gotcha word because everyone miss spells it and you're the first person who's actually spelled it right on the first try. Oh that's exciting God I'm like I'm very pleased by that there is a quote unquote gifted child inside me who still does

“for the validation. When I think about the like national spelling be scenario you've described”

I think a about how intense because the friction between my parents that's something that that big would bring up when I was that age and how I can imagine being pretty stressed about that and just like yeah the feeling of having to do it in front of all those people even if it's

kids being under that amount of pressure. Although I guess we kind of like to do that in a lot of different areas. Yeah I wonder if the reason you get such like Brainiac prodigies from you know six year olds and eight year olds is because they don't have that sense of like self-consciousness

“or mortality yet like they I don't know because I think when you hit high school you have to”

make a speech on stage your body thinks it's dying like it shakes yeah at least mine but I think as a kid you could be you know concert pianists and maybe that just that shaking this doesn't come. Yeah or you just get used to it maybe I don't know. Yeah and there's this

I mean I feel like people always like to talk about how kids are resilient and I was thinking about

that the other day and I was like you know I think I think we uh I think we use that phrase to excuse our self for more than we should maybe as adults because I think what we mean when we talk about the resilience of kids is that they can get through almost anything when it is happening and then years later they're gonna have to figure out how to deal with with it and you know get therapy and stuff so I think we can fuse the ability to survive extreme situations while they're upon you with them

“not mattering to you that much you know. Yeah I think you're right. Yeah but yeah it's um I don't know”

I also remember being that age and kind of sincerely believing that I could maybe learn everything

if I managed my time well you know and there's like there's a real um there must be a word for this

and some more pensive language than ours I hope but just the feeling of like there are so many books I'm just not gonna have time to read. I'm not even gonna have time to read all the Stephen King books probably during my lifetime like I have other stuff to do and if I could have an extra life just for reading I would take it and I could learn how to spell everything. If you've seen the twilight episode um time enough that last. Oh yeah well no I haven't because

my mom told me about it when I was about 12 and I thought it was so awful that I've met I've watched many twilight zone episodes and I love that show and I recommended to people constantly. I was thinking about it last night I was trying to remember an episode and it was something something

“ran from a group but I've never watched time and I've it last because I think it's just the worst”

thing I can think of you know and also I wear really thick glasses. Yeah you're really susceptible to the fate of um yeah mergers mergers. Yeah it could happen to me it could happen to me like later today when I really think about it so yeah it's because too real man. I know well say what you did a great job on the spelling bee at least. Yeah I feel great I have a little trophy. So that was basically what a modern spelling bee looks like but contests like this have been

going on in one former another since 1700s and they weren't always called bees they were called

spelling trials telling schools yeah spelling trial is a good one. I know because you really feel like you're gonna be sentenced to some terrible thing if you miss it. They were called spelling matches spelling wars spelling fights. Okay and I think fights is a pretty accurate name considering how many of these contests did evolve into full blown physical fights. Really what are we talking here like 19th century? Okay so I have this New York Times article.

Oh my god. From 1877. I'm so excited. And it's describing a spelling contest that took place between two teenage girls in New York City. So I'm just gonna read this snippet and this is not a formal spelling bee. This is kind of like like we don't have TV yet kind of a thing. Like a west side story we meet in an alleyway with knives kind of spelling bee. All right of course yeah. All right so this is from 1877. Nelly Wilson and Rosie McGrath met on Saturday night last

and by mutual agreement organized an impromptu spelling match upon the spot. All went well until Rosie having given her friend a particularly difficult word which she could not master. Hale turned to feet with a peculiarly aggravating taunt of I told you so. The expression aroused Nelly's wrath and the match which had been solely designed to settle the question of orthographical prowess became a wrestling match which ended by both contestants being taken to the

station house after a desperate onslaught on each other's fair dresses. The story of the match was told to Justice Kilbrith at the Essex Market Police Court and he sent Nelly to prison for five days. Wow. Nelly. Yeah. Well Nelly. The whole Nelly. As far as we know that's the only spelling be that ever led directly to prison time. So they in the 1800s they could sometimes be these

they were a teaching tool and they were mostly used in New England during colonial times in the

1700s and it was just a way to get kids reading and writing by making it fun and competitive because apparently if you teach kids how to spell by turning into a competition it's just easier. Yeah. I believe it and then you know maybe the kids get violent and actually but let's worry about that later. Yeah. Okay. So they were referred to originally as spelling schools and they were very popular. It was a diversion for the class that also probably got kids energy out so you know they weren't as

you know mischievous. So I have this description here from a Connecticut man in the 1700s describing one of these spelling schools and he says another of our customs was to choose sides in the classroom to spell once or twice a week. The words to be spelled went from side to side and at the conclusion the side that one was permitted to leave the school room while the other had to sweep the room and build the fires the next morning. Oh my god. Yeah. So they were you know you're learning

“but they're also stakes. So. Right. You know you have to you're entering a labor contract”

through those you've that wasn't work to do. Yeah. And one of the reasons these spelling competitions start to emerge around the 1700s is this is when dictionary start to appear and

we talked about this last time. You know we get our first true English dictionary in 1755 from

Samuel Johnson. Hmm. Please listen to our previous episode about that. It's a delay. Yeah. And then prior to this there was just really no single standardized way to spell an English. It was very loose. Right. It was flexible. Which as you point out in your book like Shakespeare spelled his own name I differently and every signature we have of his right. Yeah. Sometimes he spelled it with an X where the K should be and sometimes he spelled it with those his emo faves. Yeah. And sometimes he's

spelling with. Oh shacks. He kind of like just start out spelling his name correctly and then just take like a 16 bar trumpet solo. It was just improv. It's just spelling. Yeah. It's just spelling.

Yeah. Like that. That's good branding. So then in the 1700s along come these dictionaries and

suddenly there's this notion of a right way to spell a word and a wrong way to spell a word. And this is really what sparks this gamification of spelling because you now you have the dictionary is this arbiter. Right. Because in the past if you tried to have a spelling based someone would just kind of throw a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and you be like, yeah sure why not. It makes sense. I don't even know how you'd test it back then. You'd be like orange and they'd be like, oh

R-A-N-J. It'd be like, yeah okay. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll take it. I'll allow it. It's an all-allow it kind of as spelling B. Yeah. It's really subjective judge, you know. He's really making decisions there. I mean I guess it's like the way we judge most talent competitions where the judges are like, I do or do not like that and it's nice that you know. It's nice to have objectivity. It makes it more democratic but anyway. Well you spelled orange correctly but

“you were out of key. So you're going home. But I don't like your outfit for 0.7. So basically”

then along come these dictionaries and then there's this arbiter and these games start coming about and they become part of colonial education and eventually people realize that there's kind of a spectator appeal in it like people like watching these contests almost more than participating in them. So once people realize this appeal schools began holding these contests in the evening instead of in the daytime so that families and neighbors could come out and watch and they kind of

transform from this classroom exercise into more of an event like an entertainment and I have a description here of one of these contests from the early 1800s and what I love about this description is it starts off sounding like a sports play by play and ends up sounding almost like a Robert Frost poem. So okay. Down goes one after another as words of three syllables are followed by those of four and these again by words of similar pronunciation and diverse

significations until only Moses and Susan remain. The spelling book has been exhausted. Dictionaries are turned over. Memories are ransacked for words of learned length and thundering sound until by and by Moses comes down like a tree and Susan flutters there still like a little leaf aloft that the frost and the fall have forgotten. The victory is declared and the contest is dismissed.

“There are hearts that flutter and hearts that ache. Secret hopes that are not realized and fun”

looks that are not returned. There's a jingling among the bells at the door. One after another the slaves dash up receive their nestling freight and are gone. God that's beautiful. It's a lot of

as evening entertainment school start challenging other schools and it expands into these regional

contests. So imagine you're attending one of these contests and it's your local school versus the school from the next town over. Naturally you're going to root for your team, your local spellers. It's your hometown. So the contest now starts to take on more the energy of a sporting event. There's cheering and heckling and I assume some drinking and maybe things get a little physical out in the parking lot and what's fun is that throughout all of this like they're getting

more and more cutthroat. They're getting more and more revelers and full of entertainment and throughout

“all this they're still calling them spelling schools because I think it's it's believed that”

it's a deliberate decision to kind of appease the Puritan sensibilities when New England at the time.

School makes it sound wholesome and educational. Right you can revel all you want as long as it's in service of education surely. Yes and you know for Puritan minister Judge hears that a spelling school is going down tonight the local school else. He's probably not going to investigate. Got I love that. Yeah. So they're still largely this New England phenomenon but then in the early 1800s New Englanders start moving out west the frontiers expanding and they're establishing schools and churches out

west and they're bringing this concept of spelling schools to the rest of the country. The front here is expanding and we're going to spell on it. I think for a lot of these these frontiers yearsmen they I think they like the fact that it comes from New England because it gives their settlements this air of culture and sophistication. I mean it was very rough and their bones out there

“and I think for them to bring a little slice of New England with them it makes it feel more like a”

like a real American settlement. Yeah this reminds me of I just heard about the existence of singing school out west as well as kind of you know in the context of I think Laura and Elmanza wild are going on singing school dates where it was like you know it had school in the title and you get taught songs and sort of how to harmonize and stuff but it seemed like it was also a way for people to socialize you know I guess I don't know this it I mean I kind of in a way I

don't know if this is too big of a connection to draw but I was also reflecting this week that like we've kind of in the way that we talk at least if one is spending too much time online which most people are because we are forced to these days we've like lost the language of just relaxing right because it's like I feel like maybe this is maybe in TikTok pills but I'm like I feel like I'm seeing a lot of especially younger women talking about like he got a reset and then wrought or like I

“did this in this and then I wrought it on the couch and it's like I think you can begin to wrought”

within two or three hours I think you might have just been sitting down and resting or like watching a movie or something but sure you were decomposing and I know that it's like language sort of gets gunked and takes on its own sort of you know it evolves and that's great but just the thing where we can't let ourselves relax and even if we're relaxing we have to do it harder than everybody else somehow so I guess this idea of oh they're going to sing a school that sounds

very productive they're definitely not going to be you know not to say that I know what was going on with you know Lauren Elmanza Wilder but let's you know they're definitely not going to be making out in the slay after right school but this is I don't know the American obsession with productivity it's not like we chose to be obsessed with this you know because it's it's uh we would die if we weren't in many times throughout history but it's it's I don't know it's an interesting

thing so it's negative connotations to everywhere we used to describe not doing anything you know you're lazy you're loafing you're rotting like why can't we just be I don't know why can't we just find there must be some French term that that is way more positive yeah I would like that I'm I'm going to take the evening off and just die just die a little I'm just going to get close to death and then I'll be good or like killing time I'm going to murder six or seven hours tonight

I'm going to be an unrepentant it's going to be a bloodbath of time and it's like you're just

watching star wars I feel like this is a George Carlin bit that never occurred it this

God I remember watching the first ever episode of SNL with my mom once and George Carlin hosted and just from what I remember absolutely bombed it like opened with the stand-up monologue and I feel like the audience is like either not much properly or did not know what to do with it it was about like football and baseball and the different languages of them and I've always found

of Saturday Night Live yeah we got our relax as a people but okay so we're in we're in

“spelling school spelling is seeking it's alleged manifest destiny and god I hope this doesn't”

get violent at all oh I can't imagine it ever would so well cue the California gold rush oh no 1840s the California gold rush it brings a much rougher crowd at west and these boon town starts bringing up and spelling contests for whatever reason they become like this leisure activity and many of these mining towns it's just their entertainment you know wasn't all brothels and gambling I mean you know a man can only brothel for so many hours and then he got it and then you got to

go over the saloon and try to spell pneumonia it's never they never had the sun deadwood

well maybe they did I didn't finish it maybe I should finish that was anyway oh you you missed you missed the spelling the episode I missed the spelling bee season you missed the karaoke episode and I missed all the good stuff I guess all I remember is elsewhere in general having a kidney stone yeah um so these California miners they start coming out west these spelling matches they they start to lose their pure tin veneer at this point the people stop calling them schools

“now they're using words like spelling matches and fights and wars and I think generally they've”

just become a bit rougher around the edges so I have this poem here from 1878 it describes a fight that allegedly broke out at a spelling match in California among miners and it's clearly a tongue-in-cheap poem so don't take it as fact but it captures a little bit of the spirit of these matches it's from the shots and murmurs section there goes there was lanky gym of suddors fork and bilsen of lagrange and pistol bob who wore that day a knife by way of change there was

poker dick from whiskey flat and smith of shooters bend and brown of calivaris which I want no better friend the first word out was parallel and seven let it be till joe walled stin his double l but twix the a and e then rhythm came he tried to smile and said they had him there and lanky gym with one long stride got up and took his chair then with a trembling voice and hand and with a wandering eye the chair next offered idarduck and dick began with eye idarduck is a bird and it

it starts with the letters e i not eye and bilsen smiled then bilsen shrieked just how the fight

begun I never node for bilsen dropped and dick he moved up one then quick got up three finger jack

and locked the door and yelled not one mother son goes out until these words have all been spelled you want to know the rest my dears that's all for in me you see the only gent that live to tell

“about the spelling bee oh i love this reminds me of um i think it's the same meter i mean”

it has a lot of things but as um molgabild's bicycle which I feel like is kind of it i don't know similar tale of woe this is the woe is called the woe verse this is the woe it be rhyming it's the woe meter yeah so all right so in this poem they're calling it a spelling bee so that's around the time they start calling it this this is the 1870s and it has nothing to do with bumblebees yeah it's gonna have to you know where the bee came from yes so the bee in this sense it's

a term for like a communal gathering in which everyone is focused on the same task oh oh oh so like quilting bees were very popular and this was when women would get together and work on a different section of a quilt then there would be like logging bees midward men would clear land and cut down trees oh barn raising bees so that's where this term comes from and that being

said if you go to any spelling bee today they always lean into the honeycomb motif there's usually

some guy in a bee costume so I maybe it's maybe the word has started to take on a different meaning when it comes to bees maybe people start to think of a spelling bee is more of a hive or more of a you know everyone's being industrious and buzzing around yeah I don't know but that's where it does come from working hard and then dying for the queen as she you know excretes eggs out of her gigantic thorax I want to see the queen of the spelling bee I bet she's pretty scary

I can't know you knew so much about bees I mean isn't everybody you know about bees I don't think I knew what part of the queen's body she excretes from but everything else I'm

in the in the middle um well I can do it there's probably right now a real bee person who's like

“Sarah my god got it got it together sound off in the comments yeah oh all right so this is the”

1870s now spelling bees are becoming very popular not just as this classroom exercise but now is entertainment and regional entertainment and leisure activities and mining towns and they are becoming more popular as these I don't know if they're statewide yet but definitely citywide

competitions and this is basically around the time that spelling bee start to collide with

something called the simplified spelling movement and anyone who's read my book knows that I am absolutely obsessed with this movement so just as a little background this simplified spelling movement it was basically the centuries long campaign to make English easier spell so people wanted to remove silent letters and phoneticize words and spell love L UV and laugh LFF and though THO and people who are part of this movement like one of the first big names to join was Benjamin Franklin

in 1768 he drafted this new phonetic spelling system that tried to respeel busy as b i z i and code is K U L D and he tried to remove six letters from the alphabet that he considered redundant

letters like C because clearly anything that C can do K and S can also do very easily I guess

that's actually cute a little letter though it is and it's the same lower cases uppercase which is very nice when you're a child but we can't get all precious about our letters sometimes letters got to go now we got a killer darling's death to see me I mean what if your name has a C in it I guess if you're a Benjamin Franklin you don't have to worry about it I know although I don't know what his middle name was oh but you know if he had his way everyone's just gonna have to adapt

you're gonna have to change your letter to a K or an S and the same thing with the letter Y, same thing with the letter J, Q, W and X all of these letters he considered redundant because you can make those sounds using other letters I mean if we got rid of Q then Scrabble would be a lot easier I will give him that yeah but and also do you happen your book and maybe you're about to

“to say this but I feel like I remember he like gets really excited and then in classic”

Benjamin Franklin fashion he sends his idea to like a hot lady and she's like oh yeah I don't use that wording but yeah he absolutely does he gets that's paraphrase yeah he gets excited about this proposal I mean he's an inventor he gets excited about everything he comes up with this is got a pretty good record of successful inventions so he comes up with this one he writes it down he sends it to this woman she's the daughter of his land lady and she's like 20 not she's like 50 years

his junior they have this penpal correspondence and he's very excited to send it to her she is not excited to receive it she waits three months before replying and when she finally does it's just there's no enthusiasm there she basically just takes it apart and tells him all the problems

with it and all the reasons it would never work out and he um he he just basically shelves the project

and never talks better again well yeah I don't know I guess find that very cute and silly the cuteness of some of these dead old white men sometimes they just warm your heart

“well I feel like it's like I feel I you know I think that revering the founding fathers is a bit”

machin also I don't think that they had zero good ideas I think thinking of them is like cute silly men is what works for me you know because you're like because isn't it like I maybe even talked about this last time but like Thomas Kufferson really good ideas a lot of moral atrocity as well in his life but what I like to think of him as is the guy who broke his arm or something trying to do a handspring to impress a woman in France when he was

far too old to be doing that like that to me as Thomas Kufferson oh that's fantastic I really humanizes him he's just a silly guy yeah also I feel like Benjamin Franklin invented the performative early morning routine because he has like the whole thing in his what his autobiography about like here is how I here's my daily routine that I absolutely don't do because I like playing chess in the bath with my mistress or whatever and about like you know like delivering his newspaper

whatever with his wheelbarrow so that people would see him out there being and go oh that Ben Franklin

living on social media and that's Ben Franklin baby yeah I will admit in college I think freshman year

I read the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and I did try to do a very regimented schedule of self improvement like he did okay you wake up but you can drive the business of the day right but like time for exercise and time for reading and time for studying certain literary texts yep memorizing certain poems like all these little things that I try to do it for a few months and I remember some of those poems yeah and it's like it's just I don't know it's like

“I mean I really like routine but I think that there needs to be like squishiness for me within routine”

and I also remember in the autobiography of Ben Franklin he has this thing about like and I realize that beer is pointless because bread has the same or more nutritious like Ben pull the other one you

know we're not doing it for the nutrition so Ben he gets his proposal rejected never really

talks about again but this movement to reform English to simplify it to make it more consistent it catches on and then later in the 1780s Noah Webster comes along and this is you know 30 years before Webster's dictionary but he writes this proposal titled an essay on a reform mode of spelling he insists that all silent letters should be removed from English and that the word tongue should be spelled T U N G and that machine should be spelled M A S H E E N and tongue machine should be spelled like that

“as he would assume yeah for sure and daughter should be spelled DA W T E R and again this proposal doesn't”

go anywhere it just gets this backlash of ridicule it's just so easy to mock these kinds

proposals because this spelling really does look childish you're basically asking a you know six

year old to sound out the word tough you know or three year old little spell at T U F so again it doesn't go anywhere but the movement takes off in the 1800s it's building and building and spelling society started peering all over the US and Britain and they're all pushing vastly different ideas for how to simplify and streamline English there are some reformers who want to remove letters from the alphabet and some who want to add letters to the alphabet there's

some who want to flip letters upside down and some who want to replace all letters with numbers

“it really runs the gamut and the people behind these proposals you know as cookies some of them are”

the people are like these well-respected academics so their scholars and scientists and Oxford professors people with real credibility so for instance in 1879 there's an organization formed an England called the English spelling reform association and its vice presidents are Alfred Lord Tennyson and Charles Darwin. Oh because they weren't busy. They weren't busy um and then later there's an organization called the Simplified Spelling Society and its vice president is HG Wells and Mark

Twain is part of it so there's this big push among the well-respected academics with a lot of intellectual credibility and because so many prominent figures become involved in this movement simplified spelling begins to spread very rapidly across the US and at the same time that it's becoming popular spelling bees are also becoming increasingly popular and it's like two parallel trends and they're both related to English spelling and they're happening simultaneously

you know they kind of have different goals because on the one side you have the simplified spellers who are trying to fix English and eliminate its inconsistencies and on the other side you have spelling bees which are essentially celebrating those inconsistencies and rewarding those who can master those inconsistencies so you end up with these two opposing forces and they're they're pulling in different directions one's pulling toward tradition one's pulling toward reform

and it it all comes to this breaking point right around 1906 so 1906 this is the year that the simplified spelling board is founded in New York City by Andrew Carnegie he's a steel tycoon probably among the five richest people in the world at the time and he's a big funder of art and educational causes so he's the namesake of Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Mellon University and thousands of libraries and museums across the US and just for anyone in Pittsburgh who wants to

hear it because so you know we know Carnegie I know it's Carnegie but everyone in the rest of the country says Carnegie I'm sorry we can't help it. I agree with you that it should be Carnegie or

the audiobook this was a point of debate among a lot of people at my publisher. I bet and we decided

“Carnegie is just the more popular, more widespread version but Carnegie is correct and I think”

in the original Scottish Carnegie was what he grew up pronouncing. Right I don't know and that's yeah like a funny thing about this whole area too that like things become true by being prevalent you know like could you argue that comprised of has become a real meaning of the word comprised even though that's not how it works and it doesn't need enough and people say comprised of because they're

always thinking of composed of but now people hear comprised of enough that it has become like a

real term. I don't know I I enjoy knowing the correct way to say things but I'm not going to make other people do it it just makes me happy personally. Yeah um okay let's continue. Standardized spelling is on a collation course with spelling bees and whacking as I hope. Okay so in 1906 the cause that catches Carnegie's attention is simplified spelling and it becomes really obsessed

“with this idea that you can improve American society by simplifying the way we spell and which is”

a lot of what a lot of these reformers believed because if you can improve literacy and increase efficiency it's going to save people time and money and just create a more educated electorate. Like it could have become obsessed with steel millsafety or something but I can see how this would be like you know that might be a bit of a busman's holiday I guess for him. I mean you don't become among the five richest people in the world by being concerned with steel millsafety.

Well I suppose that's true. Respect to his family. I mean no no disrespect. You know the love the libraries. Yeah love the concept hall. So he forms a simplified spelling board in 1906. He recruits 30 members to be part of it. These include Mark Twain, Melville Dewey who is the creator of the Dewey decimal system William James, the philosopher and psychologist in acting US Supreme Court justice named David Brewer. It's just this real

who's who of intellectuals in America at the time. It's really got an incredible roster

and the goal of the organization is to seek out teachers and and journalists and all these other gatekeepers of language and try to convince them to adopt simplified spelling. So in 1906 for instance Mark Twain attends a dinner event for the Associated Press and he makes a speech to his room full of journalists and he says, "I am here to make an appeal to the nations on behalf of simplified spelling. If the Associated Press will adopt and use our simplified forms and that's

spread them to the ends of the earth, covering the whole spacious planet with them as with a garden of flowers, our difficulties are at an end. And we shall be rid of pneumonia and nomatics and diphtheria and terredactal and all those other insane words which no man addicted to the simple Christian life can try to spell and not lose some of the bloom of his piety in the demoralizing attempt." Wow, spelling pneumonia is making people worse Christians. I had no idea. And basically

for the most part, once again, the public does not love this. I mean, they love making fun of it as we all would, as we all should. Right, because it is very funny and again, like very cute to see these

“like very serious grown men who are very important in their time period telling us all to spell”

enough with a UN and AF at the end. Yeah, and it's just one of the main reasons that the movement

never cut on. You would imagine people of this caliber of intellect would also understand something

about branding and you know what the public would have mainstream group of people would like, what the everyday layperson will allow into their everyday lives and changing your spelling from scratch is not necessarily something that people want to do. And newspapers poke fun at it a lot. They use these exaggerated phonetic headlines like spelling Carnegie with a K and spelling words on purpose just to make the whole thing look absurd. Yeah. So that's most of the backlash, it's mockery,

it's ready to kill, but there is one person who's completely one over by the simplified spelling word. And that is US president, theodore Roosevelt. Classic. So Roosevelt becomes so excited about simplified spelling that he writes a letter to the simplified spelling board saying, the president will hear after spell the way you say he ought to and he does. He directs his denographer to respeal all documents and correspondence is from the oval office,

in simplified spelling, then he directs the government printing office to do the same and he orders

This is judicial rulings and census reports and like bills and laws. The Supreme Court with a K, come on. No Teddy, I know you're the more fun Roosevelt, but there's a

“limit now. I don't know what it was, I think, I mean, it's funny to us, but to them it was a very”

serious thing. And I think for Teddy, he always saw himself as a reformer, like a leader, someone who's

going to lead America into the 20th century. And I think for him, the simplified spelling was just that next linguistic frontier that he was going to conquer on his horse and he's going to be an American hero. I think that's the way he saw it. Yeah. And to be fair, I guess, to the idea, it's like, you know, this is a ridiculous language to learn how to spell it. And then I do see, like, it does seem like a meaningful campaign to want to make it easier for people to feel confident

using the language that we speak. I just, I don't know, I guess with all this hindsight, it's like, I don't, clearly that didn't work out. And I don't know if that would have been so obvious at the time. But yeah, I don't, I don't want to act like it's like an idea without merit, because I think that like maybe it base, it is kind of really a very democratic idea, which we don't have enough of lately. Yeah, there, there is a lot of merit to it. I want to say there isn't. I mean, if you ask

“me, should spelling be simpler, an English, I'd say yes. If you ask me, should we simplify it?”

I'm not so sure because I don't think going into the language and like forcing it is really a practical thing. Right. Like you can't really pull it into the future, just like you can't really pull it back into the past. It's just going to do what it does. Right. Yeah, and I guess that's the beautiful thing about it, is that it will evolve, but we don't really get to decide how that happens. And that is maybe a very democratic thing, because people will either start adopting, you know,

a phrase or a pronunciation or a new word or they won't. And you can't as one person decide what they're going to like. Right. No Webster actually is this great quote. Something like the progress of language is like the course of the Mississippi River. I guess in the sense that you can't redirect that water flow. You can't change the course of that water. You can't change the flow. At most, you can kind of sit on the riverbank and observe it or you could dip your toes into it. But

that river is going to evolve the way it evolves. It's going to depend on geology and geography. And weather and us as humans, we can't do anything except observe it. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. So Roosevelt gets really simplification happy. There's, again, a wave of political cartoons mocking him. There's one depicting him holding a gun firing bullets into this very large dictionary. Basically

saying he's, he's murdering English. And because he's most powerful person in the world,

it's the highest office in the land. And because simplified spelling has reached the Oval Office. It becomes this really hotly debated issue in the country. It's dividing people into those in favor of reform and those who believe in preserving English as it is. And funnily enough, Roosevelt, he banned in simplified spelling after a few months in public humiliation is it's bad. But the debate just gets bigger and bigger. And then that's when it starts spilling over

into local spellingbees. They kind of become these sites of protest. There's one girl at a spelling being Indiana who causes some controversy because she refuses to accept her first place prize because the first place prize is a photograph of President Roosevelt. So she's making a statement against simplified spelling. Apparently when she offers the prize to her fellow contestants, they all refuse it to. Then there's a girl in Pennsylvania who makes a big scene at a spelling

be when she refuses to spell the word honest with an H. So she's coming at it from the other end, the pro-reform side. Oh boy. And likewise there's a boy at a Pittsburgh spelling bee who insists on spelling the word heightened as H.I.T.U.N. That does feel very very this moment of people to be like actually I decide how to spell things at this spelling bee. Yeah we're going back to Shakespeare time where you just you spell it the way you feel it. Yeah well I just like it feels like we're

in a moment of just kind of the you know what's going on culturally in the United States partly

having to do with not to put the blame on kids because I never well but you know people being like

“I actually feel that the truth is this and I am not accepting any notes and it's like oh”

well you're talking about like something that there actually is an objective answer to and you're not

and then there's my truth. Yeah and my truth is that heightened is spelled H.I.T.U.N. Yeah I mean that makes

“more sense to me than people putting bee fat on their faces to be honest. That's true. That's true.”

Probably. Yeah. So basically throughout the spelling bee world at this time kids are using

spelling bees as these little like soap boxes to weigh on weigh in on this national debate and similar things are happening in classrooms and in newsrooms and the tension is building between reformers and traditionalists and it's right at this moment right when the spelling debate is reached it's most visible and political peak that America decides to hold its first national spelling debate. Yeah. So here we go. Here we go. So the date is announced for June 29th, 1908.

It's going to be held in Cleveland, Ohio and this big 6,000-seat theater called the hippodrome and traditionalists are rejoicing. They see this as a rebuttal to simplified spelling.

“One journalist calls it a flagrant defiance of simplified spelling. It's just this big”

symbolic repudiation of this reform movement. I will say there also happens to be some conspiracy minded people who think this is kind of a ploy to sneak simplified spelling back into the spotlight and that somehow the kids will step on stage expecting a normal spelling bee. Only to find out this is a simplified spelling bee and they have to spell it with as few letters as possible or something

but the rumor is nonsense. So it's June 1908. It's the week of America's first national

spelling bee. Cleveland is decorated with colorful banners and streamers and workers are setting up this big firework show for after the event. It's this big celebration of spelling and there are 60 students who have come from around the country to compete. They're all in eighth grade and they're representing four regional teams. They're from New Orleans, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Eerie. So they call it a national spelling bee but I guess it's more of a regional showdown.

Yeah, because Pittsburgh and Eerie are like two hours apart. I want to say that's very cute. We've got a lot of Pennsylvania into this one. You know, so they're setting up for the contest. Everything is going smoothly until a few days before the competition went to controversy emerges and how God this has nothing to do with spelling reform. Okay. It has to do with one girl on the Cleveland team named Marie Bolton. Marie is 13 years old. She's the star-speler at her school

and she's black. So when the New Orleans team finds out that they'll be competing against the black girl, they threaten to boycott the entire competition. Jesus Christ. You know, okay. Remember, this is 1908. It's right in the middle of Jim Crow. segregation is legal in the south, but this spelling bee is taking place in the north, which it's not subject to Jim Crow and the organizers of the bee refuse to give in to this threat.

The New Orleans superintendent keeps pushing. He insists he's going to withdraw his entire team unless Marie Bolton is removed. Again, the organizers don't budge. Which I mean, I, you know, not to see into the mind of this person, but it does occur to me that perhaps he wouldn't care so much if he weren't afraid that she would be your students, you know. Imagine the fear of,

“you know, racist team from the south thinking they might get shown up. Yeah. And then what?”

And also it's like, you know, people are racist just out of habit. I think, but yeah, I guess this, the fear of having to witness someone else's excellence. Yeah. Man, I thought you were going to tell me that Marie was secretly 45 years old and just like hadn't gotten a lot of nutrition when she was frying up. That's the kind of scandal that I'm trying to hear. Man, I wonder what your media diet is because that is quite the scandal. You know, too much forensic files for sure. Yeah. All right.

So, New Orleans is threatening to boycott. Cleveland is pushing back. It's the standoff and it continues. It drags on. Good for the B, but they're, you know, yeah, not conceiting any of that. I agree. Right? You wouldn't totally expect this in 1908 and yet there it is. And it's pretty impressive and

the standoff drags on until the eve of the B, the night before. And finally, like it basically,

the last possible moment, the superintendent gives up his bluff has been called. He knows his team is travel too far across the country and they're not going to turn back. So he drops the threat. Nice. Next morning, thousands of people arrive at the hippodrome. There's a band playing out in the street.

us to round two of your spelling B. Oh boy. I'm going to give you three words that were actually part of this competition. And I guess we'll see if you're smarter than an eighth grader from 1908.

“I really don't think I am, but yeah, let's get into it. All right. These are, I think a little bit”

easier than Fuchsia and you nailed that one. So I'm hopeful. I hopeful, too. All right. All of my

pride is writing on this one. I must say Sarah, the first word is cemetery. Okay. Wow. See,

and this is like, I feel like I know how to spell cemetery, but now that we're asking me, I'm like, wait, is there an A and cemetery? I don't think there is. Okay. C, E, M, E, T, E, R, Y, is that right? That is correct. Oh, thank God. Okay. God. This is very stressful. And just so we get the etiquette right. Oh, yeah. I have to say the word cemetery before I spell it. Is that right? And then you say it at the end. Okay. C, E, M, E, T, E, R, Y, cemetery.

That is correct. I want to do this right. Okay. Great. Sarah, your second word is pumpkin.

Okay. I do feel good about this one. Pumpkin. P, U, M, P, K, I, N. Pumpkin. I have always felt

“that you should be able to ask for a pumpkin of syrup at Starbucks. And that means you get like half”

of a half a pump. It's a pumpkin. It's not a whole pump. It's a pumpkin. It's a little child pump. And if you want to take a tiny little nap, you take an napkin. This is not caught on. You know, and if your dog wants a pump, it's a pup pump. Yeah, exactly. All right. So third word, last word. Okay. Your word is mischievous. Okay. See, this one I know is tricky for people, partly because many people, including my dad, pronounced at mischievous. Mm-hmm.

But I feel like once you know how it's pronounced, it's easier to spell. So I'm going to, okay, mischievous. M, I, S, C, H, I, E, V, O, U, S, mischievous. That is correct. Yeah. Four, four, four.

Ah. God. This is been incredible for my confidence. I got to say.

Can you imagine if you were born in 1888? You would thrive. I would, but you know, glass is technology was not perhaps as good. So I feel like I would be walking around with a magnifying glass the whole time. I don't know. I come from Master. I have a lot of ancestors who apparently were looking at things that were very close to their faces for a living. All right. So the spelling bee, it goes on all day. And the format is a little different from what

we're used to. Spellers are called up one at the time. That parts the same. But if they get a word wrong, they're not eliminated. It just counts against their score and their team score. And then at the end of the night, all the scores are tally to find the winner. Which means it's a really long competition. Can you imagine round after round of 60 people taking their turns? So it goes on into the evening. Yeah. It sounds like an election day, honestly. Yeah. You know, remember when elections were like

kind of fun, you'd be like waiting for the returns to come in and watching the states turn different colors. And it wasn't entirely as grim as it is now. I mean, you know, it's not like the stakes have ever been zero. But I remember they're used to be at least a sense of like enjoyment spectating that kind of a thing. So I don't know, more along spelling these.

“I remember that too. I remember that too. And yet I've been burned too many times.”

Yeah, we can't go back. We can't go back to watching Wolf Blitzer appear as a hologram. Oh boy. And having, you know, that was that was a fun one. Yeah. hologram blitzer like an all like Anakin Skywalker. He'll appear in a hologram long after he's dead. Yeah. That's right. We get where it will be watching hologram wolf blitzer until we are all like her. So everyone's taking their turn. It takes hours. The B stretches all the way into the

evening. Finally, it ends. The scores are tallied. Eerie finishes last with 85 misspelled words. New Orleans finishes third with 66. Pittsburgh is second with 47 and Cleveland. 40 misspelled words. They win the B. They take home the team prize. Nice job, Cleveland. Q the applause. Then it turns to the individual prize. And it's a tie. This is a tie between two spellers. They both have perfect scores. They've gone all day without misspelling anything.

Bolden from Cleveland. Okay. Now the rule is state that in the event of a tie, the prize goes to the contestant from the stronger team. And the stronger team that day is Cleveland,

which means Marie Bolden becomes America's first national spelling B champion.

Marie Bolden. Maybe there is a statue of her, but if there is, and I would like to see one. At least there should be a hologram. Yeah. I feel like there should be more statues of kids. And I guess this is not a real person, but in Grant Park in Portland, there's a statue of

“Ramona Quimbee. And I think that's really nice. More statues of real and fictional kids. That's”

what I think. Kids do some very impressive things throughout history. And this is, I don't know, I just wanted those stories. In what better way to inspire future kids than to have a statue of children. Right. As opposed to telling children, you know, someday, if you grow up and you

get on a horse and make other people kill a lot of an additional group of people. You can have

statue that the patients sit on all day. Yeah. You two can have pigeons shit on you. Which you can already have now as a human being. Wow. All right. So, Marie Bolden is the champion. And the theater erupts in applause. And she's swarmed by journalists and by spectators. She's later celebrated in newspapers around the country with some obvious exceptions. The next day, the black writer, Booker T. Washington, even mentions Marie in a speech. He's speaking

to a white audience. And he says to them, you will admit that we spell out of the same spelling book that you do. And I think you will also admit that we spell a little better. So that was

America's first national spelling bee. And, you know, you don't want it to sound too much like a

Disney movie. It's not all happily ever after for race relations in the country. But it is this beautiful moment. I think in American history and at the very least, I guess we know it really angered the New Orleans superintendent, which I think it's a good victory. I'm yeah. I'm happy with that. I mean, I feel like there's this, I don't know, that stories are tricky because every story has to have an ending and that in reality, things just go on and on and on. But yeah, but those moments,

I don't know, there's something something about a moment like that that also kind of like stays dynamic in a way that people can revisit throughout history maybe. And that these, I don't know,

“these triumphs maybe don't go stale. Yeah. If I'm making sense, yeah. I agree. You need to kind of”

in case those moments in concrete in a way. I mean, they are statues and are like collective memory. Right. We have to have some kind of happy triumphs to have and hope for the future. Even if we're telling our stories as though they're playing in their clear and their buttoned up and they sound like a fairy tale, it is good to have those in our memory collectively. Yeah. And that success kind of brings its own demons a lot of the time and the sort of the way the story continues often gets into that.

But also, it's like, I mean, there are without it out kids in the United States today who are being excluded from, you know, educational opportunities on the basis of race and people are, I think, less overt about their intents now. But in a way, I don't know, it seems like that kind of story also remains as meaningful as it does because with a little bit of revision about the same thing, I feel like it could happen somewhere in America right now, you know, not this exact spelling

be, but like something meaningful to kids. Yeah. Where adults are intentionally excluding kids for

“pretty nefarious reasons, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Great. And I think this victory, like Marie”

Bolden's victory, there is something very American about it because of have democratic. Right. This, I think spelling bees are democratic. You know, when I was doing research for this subject, I would ask myself a lot, why is this such a uniquely American phenomenon? Like they don't even have regular spelling bees in England. So it's not even like it's specifically English language phenomenon. It is an American phenomenon. And I think, I mean, one of the reasons

historically is that, you know, England, they were more obsessed with correct pronunciation than correct spelling because correct pronunciation meant you came from a certain class. Right. You meant you had a certain upper class upbringing, you took allocation lessons, but spelling is classless. It's more egalitarian because in theory, anybody who owns an English dictionary can win a spelling bee. You know, forget all your expensive tutors. If you own a big chunky 30 pound

Right. Which I think appeals to a certain democratic image. We have, you know, you could have

Marie Bolden competing against a descendant of the Mayflower. You could have first generation

immigrant competing against, whoever, it's more of a level playing field. Yeah. And this thing too that I feel like so many, you know, English words from England, especially like surnames and place names are famously difficult to pronounce because there's like three syllables that you're not supposed to pronounce and just like leave unspoken and it becomes such a chivalent kind of a thing. And because, and of course, you know, I'm sure that in this spelling bee is of today,

“well, I mean, I remember, I'm sure this is come up for you. There was a national spelling”

bee documentary about 15 years ago where, you know, it gets into like, there are some kids who kind I have to do it themselves and there are some kids whose parents can afford tutors or even more tutors or even higher powered tutors or whatever. And that, you know, of course, I don't know, we find ways to, on level the playing field even when it should be. But yeah, that at the end of the day, it's like surely for it to believe in the goals and the ideals of this country, like a

big part of it is letting kids succeed on their own merit and sort of seeing what they can do when they're not being held back. Yeah. So it is a, this is very American moment in 1908. And it also for the simplified spellers, it kind of marks the beginning of the end for their movement. Nah, because spelling bees become a big national phenomenon and, you know, Carnegie starts becoming increasingly impatient with his simplified spelling board. It's not making much progress.

He cuts off funding in 1917 and then few years later, the board officially dissolves. So it kind of ends a chapter in these dual movements and they're, the way they've, they've been competing with each other throughout the 1800s. And there are occasional reformers who come along after that, trying to simplify English. George Bernard Shaw makes a pretty valiant attempt in the

1940s before he dies. But the movement, it just never returns to the heights of 1906. So I guess

in that sense, it's like traditional spelling one, spelling bees are more popular than ever. And you just don't hear much from the simplified spellers. You know, of all the possible

“movements, this is one that I wouldn't mind coming back, you know, because I think it's like”

it feels kind of silly and over the top, but like not intrinsically harmful and that's more than I can say about a lot of other stuff. In fact, it's, it's intrinsically, I mean, at its, if it succeeds, it would increase literacy. Right. Like if it succeeds in the long run, if it really does catch on and then a hundred years from now, you don't even think of it as a reformed mode of spelling. It's just the way you do things. Yeah. Then it would probably increase access to

education because as it is, English is a uniquely messy and difficult language to learn to spell. It takes us two to three times longer to learn than learning Spanish or German or Italian. By the German thing, it's humbling because that's not a language you think of as being particularly easy to metabolize and they have all the like crazy long words. But yeah, it's like an internal consistency, I guess that we don't have. Right. It's the kind of consistency that if you

learn the set of rules for that language, you can apply those set of rules in most scenarios. Right. But in English, if you learn the sound of G makes, you don't know at all what the sound that makes in different scenarios. Sometimes it's a hard G. Sometimes it's a soft G. Sometimes makes the sound of an F like in rough or tough. And sometimes it's silent, like in night. I mean, how do you teach a kid so many contingencies? You would it's a lot easier to teach them

100 rules that they have to memorize and they apply in all cases. Yeah. So that's really the

“problem. That's what these spelling reformers were trying to do. They were trying to come up with”

a set of rules that in the long run would make English more on a level with a lot of other more phonetic European languages and it would save us a lot of schooling. You know, most Italians

learn, they master Italian spelling in their first year of school. God damn it. And when it comes to

English spelling, most of us don't master it in an entire lifetime. No. Yeah. I mean, I'm confident in my spelling, but as you can see, I get rattled pretty easily when we're doing an imaginary spelling bee. Yeah. And because it did right, there's like not really rules to fall back on. Right. Right. And yet at the same time, like I am so very fond of the English language as it is and in all of its ridiculousness, and it's I would be sad to lose a lot of

the sillier parts of it. If it ever came to that, which I don't imagine happening. But yeah,

it's flaws and it's faults, but at its core, language should be about communication. And if you're

cutting out, you know, a 30% of the population, you're cutting them out of being part of this conversation. Then I don't know if it's really doing it's it's job. Right. But I don't know. I would I do feel like precious about complicated English words that I had to learn to spell. And a lot of people also take a historical perspective and they look at a multi-syllable English word and they can see that, oh, this syllable came in because the Romans conquered us and they spoke Latin.

Right. And that syllable came in because the Vikings conquered us and they spoke Norse. And they like that historical record of it. I just personally don't think it's the most practical thing we could have. Right. It's like trying to communicate in a series of museum plaques and it, yeah, and we have cows and beef because of the Romans and the Saxons and the Norman said buff and whatever. But yeah, I guess it's I don't know. Maybe there's room for a lot

“is maybe one of the beautiful things too. And I think whenever people try and police the way that”

others are using English, it's really you can't you can't stop innovation. And I think that like the ways that you know and you ever have a cat who runs across the room and then starts sharpening as

claws for no particular reason with an incredible sense. And then he runs away as mysteriously

is here right. Okay. But yeah, I guess it's just that I feel like maybe the thing that feels most democratic to me right now is not trying to sort of implement a system of spelling even if it's a simplified one. But like letting people keep using the English language in the ways that work for them and not having anyone person or institution claiming that they get to decide what gets to be correct or not because I think if you're successfully communicating an idea and if people understand

“what you're saying then like that's what we want I think. I think that that's maybe like the”

the final note of irony you know all this is it's what's happening today in like digital communication. People you know routinely abbreviate words when they're texting. Yeah. I write THRU for through all the time and sometimes I spell the word U is just the letter U. And these were all spellings that were kind of that were proposed centuries ago by these simplified spellers. And so maybe like I mean these spellings now maybe the difference is that

when they were were proposed by reformers they're coming from the top down from an authority figure who's trying to force it upon us. But now with the digital speak the text peak it's coming from the bottom up and it's happening naturally and it's not being forced upon us by politicians. It's just there to meet the needs of our world. Some of these catch on more than others. I know that LOL and OMG are now in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Yeah. And LOL is a great one because it's like it used to mean laughing out loud. And I feel like people really used that way for a few years there. And now it's like a part of

“millennial irony I think where it's like I will very frequently text my friends and be like”

I feel you know like when things like typically about something pretty awful you know where I'll all be like um I got the flu again LOL. Yeah I got a $1200 water and sewer bill LOL again which I did by the way I have to figure out what happened with that and why god why but I think that that's a that's an innovation I think we missed out on why god why yeah W G W W W W G W. The right and that like we the communication is like we have to at least think it's our idea

maybe to make change and to be told how to do things a certain way it feels too personal. That's really the way I think language has to evolve at least for us in America where

we've never loved authority figures we got rid of our kings I mean in some sense.

Yeah I mean some people appear to really want a king while also claiming loudly that they don't want anyone to tell them what to do and I guess that's based on the idea that they want someone to tell other people what to do that's my analysis right now. Yeah you know that it's kind of a sad image I'm reluctant to bring this up but I thought about this a lot when I was writing this book and talking about it with my editor the fact that if simplified spelling were to make

a comeback as part of like some big political reform it could very easily be Donald Trump that

yeah I guess what everyone now you're going to spell like me and we're going to enforce this and

everyone has to spell in this simple way and the most important word in the sentence has to be in

caps all caps sometimes all caps sometimes three caps sometimes one sometimes yeah six I yeah I could see it happening I can too yeah I don't know it's it's tricky I guess like

“I will never stop having a lot of hope and love for the American people and I think part of that is”

because by making the show I get to you know I get to interact with the people who listen to it and get to hear from them and of course people who don't particularly care for the show are wonderful people who give me a lot of hope as well but like just from that I don't know it's it's very easy to get overwhelmed by news of people doing like awful things around the country and I think just kind of sometimes I like take as kind of sick quietly and think about

how many people out there are just like getting up and trying to find a way to take care of the people around them and to make other people's lives a little bit easier and to just love their family and their friends and to love their country by doing things that the people in power right now are not into but you know but still that if the people in power are against democracy then

“you have to become a criminal in order to keep perpetuating it and that's fine but I don't know yeah I”

just it's um I like to think of all those people out there scattered across the country who we never hear

about on the news and who are doing good things every day and just you know trying to make pancakes and trying to spell and just try to spell well I will say if anyone out there is looking for something really warm your heart make you happy there's nothing better out there than watching the national spelling bee it is kids from like 6 to 14 really I mean they are absolute prodigy geniuses and they are so absolutely adorable yeah it's one of my favorite things so I've I've

I've attended the last few years um for research and it's incredible incredible celebration of spelling and these kids are just very cute yeah yeah there's just like I don't know something great about watching someone get to be proud of something they've worked really really hard on something I think about a lot actually as um when Nadia Komeni she was in the 1976 Olympics she was you know I don't know if she was the first gymnast to get a perfect tan but it was certainly the first

perfect tan for Olympic gymnastics and you know and it's a scoring system we don't have today there you know things have gotten more complex and I think the you know all sports of all that's a whole other topic get me a gymnast to tell me more but she you know she was 14 years old and apparently had no media training because I don't think that anyone had time or resources for that and there's these like wonderful interviews where like she's just scored like a perfect tan and

something and in journalist they're like Nadia Nadia how did you get so good in gymnastics and she's like I am so good because I work very hard when is this year is spelling B it's the last week of May and it's in Washington DC or it's outside of DC in Maryland but it's the last week of May and it's a three day event I think that they air the final day on TV it used to be on ESPN I don't know if it is anymore but it's it's kind of funny that it used to be on ESPN just you know sports center highlights

I mean I've worked competitive cornhole on ESPN I have a lot more respect for competitive spelling sorry to the cornholeers out there if we corrected the pronunciation of Carnegie for part of our

“audience you should probably also note that some people will call it bags people call it bags okay that's”

cute yeah I have a friend in Chicago she calls it bags wow now I feel like that's a super maybe a super regionalism because there's also like Oregonians really do not have a lot of weird terms or accent stuff we all sort of sound like prime time news anchors which I think is very sad accent wise but like one thing that we say that really consistently baffles outlanders I think is at some point someone in Oregon and Idaho decided that season potato witches are called

Joe Joe's and we've all just called them that ever since I think I'll be my next episode I'm going to do so much research into that specific potato wedge factoid you're going to go to Idaho you're going to find the original Joe Joe yeah or just like I don't know any listen I I want you to come

talk about any language thing that is obsessing you at any time because I always have the best time

avenging my third grade spelling be loss so I'm going to take this as a personal win yeah I think

this is the most avenging you can do before it becomes potentially dangerous this is this is perfect and tell us about what is your book called I enjoyed it so much and where can people find more of your work and all that stuff so the book is enough is enough and the second enough is spelled E and UF subtitle are failed attempts to make English easier to spell you can follow me on Instagram at Gabe.Henry and by the time this episode airs I guess will be a few weeks out from the

scripts National Spelling Bee and I'll be part of the festivities I'm going to be in DC around that time

hosting an adult spelling bee at the planet word museum which if you've never been it's this incredibly

“fun interactive museum to vote it entirely to language so that'll be on May 30 I believe incredible that's”

so great and I will be there in spirit whispering it's comprised not comprised of you're thinking which is more of a grammar be thing but yeah because why would our national grammar be be held in Canada sorry our national grammar rodeo excuse me when it's grammar it's a rodeo as we learned in the Simpsons and if you've misquote the Simpsons you're going to get a lot of Simpsons no I know they will abandon you for life yeah it's okay I've got I've got the B people now

so much this was really I don't know I really I have the best time when we do these thank you Sarah I do too and that was our episode thank you so much for listening and thank you for

“checking out our bonus episodes as well over on Patreon and Apple Plus subscriptions our most recent one”

is an episode with our deep sea correspondent Brianna Bowman about whether these workers really do have it out for older garks and if not then why are they sinking those yachts also in case you didn't hear about it in our last episode we have a prompt for its emissions again for you to send in some little audio clips I recommend the voice memo app that just comes on the iPhone or whatever equivalent you have on whatever you use but however you would like to

record yourself is fine by me that I just find to be pretty easy and I want to hear you tell us about what you love and that's pretty open ended but it could be a place a time of day a creature a moment in a piece of music or a little ritual you have an act of service that you like to perform for others truly whatever sparks your imagination we've been getting just the

“most wonderful submission so far including I think a trend of people talking about maligned creatures”

maligned places can't imagine what gave them that idea but please send those to our show email address for this type of thing sloppy and alive at gmail.com to step for twice reference as LOPP-Y-A-N-D-A-L-I-V-E actually mail.com and I'll say something I love which I've already mentioned in this episode I think but I love it so much I'm saying it again that in Portland and Grant Park we have statues of not just Ramona Quimbee but Henry Huggins and his dog ribsy and if you have some interesting

statuary or have seen any um in your experience in the world I would love to hear about that too especially statuary depicting children's literature which we could probably do is some more of so go ahead and send those in you haven't till the end of April we want to put this out for you and June and we're just so excited to hear from you it is one of my absolute favorite things and perhaps that is also the thing that I love is getting to hear from you sloppy and alive at gmail.com just don't

stand where it's incredibly windy and keep it to about three minutes or less thank you to you for sending those in or thinking about it and thank you to the people who make this show Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant Gabe Henry is our newly crowned spelling correspondent and I'm so happy about that and we have links and shown out to where you can find Gabe's book enough is enough and I can't recommend it enough it is very fun and

very funny as the history of language always isn't good hands thank you for listening thank you for