Another year, another desi. Kavya Shivshankar from Kansas, won with the word Laodicean. sources: [TOI] [WaPo]
Aishwarya Pastapur was eliminated after misspelling “menhir”. I blame it on her parents for not exposing Aishwarya to Asterix comics.
The proportion of Indian origin kids in the competition grew as the rounds progressed. Starting with 32 of 293 (about 10.92%) to 14 of 41 (34.15%) in the semis to 6 of 11 (54.55%) in the finals to 2 of 3 (66.67%) towards the end. Of course, we all know who the ultimate winner was.
In the last quarter century, there have been 9 Indian-American winners, including 7 in the last decade: Balu Natarajan (1985), Rageshree Ramachandran (1987), Nupur Lala (1999), George Thampy (2000), Pratyush Buddiga (2002), Sai Gunturi (2003), Anurag Kashyap (2005), Sameer Mishra (2008) and Kavya Shivshankar(2009). By contrast in real life, Indian-Americans account for less than 1% of the total population of the U.S.
Desis in the US often complain lack of representation in sports. To quote WaPo, the ambiance around this event was a combination of a college football game, the NFL draft and Heisman trophy all wrapped in one.
The high-gloss event, televised on ESPN and prime-time ABC, is perhaps the one time a year that sportscasters cover the English language with the same alacrity they do college football. The contest bore the trappings of an athletic event, with sweeping boom cameras, heavily made-up announcers and 41 semifinalists, who had been winnowed from a field of 293.
We’ve previously discussed the reasons for the success of South Asians in these contests. As kids of Indian origin continue their dominance, I can’t help but revisit one of the reasons for their hegemony – multilingualism. As English evolves as a language, more words from other languages are constantly added to the dictionary. Kids from Indian families are often at a huge advantage, as they are not only well acquainted with English but can also grasp their Indian mother-tongue which most likely draws its roots from Sanskrit. Some of them also add Español, which draws its roots from Latin, to their repertoire. The theory is that the more languages you’re comfortable with, not only does it increase your chances of knowing the word but also putting it in a context, which as we all know is essential to Spelling Bee success.
Join me in paying tribute to these real kids of genius:
So crack open an ice cold Thums Up, Nerdy Kid. ‘Cause we all know, the the going gets arduous, you start spelling “A-R-D-U-O-U-S”.
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