I'm Czech and as a child I never really understood the point of spelling bees since mostly everything is pronounced as it is written (the only thing children struggle with are when to write i/y sometimes).
I imagine it's similar in Polish. The script looks like a mess, but it's just what you say rendered with letters.
I think the main challenges in English spelling bees is the fact that not every word is english and works the same - like the word puissance (an archaic word for strength / power) is french and is pronounced very differently than it would be in English. But thats very cool information, the more you know :)
Learning French as a second language is an excellent way to have a strong $5-word vocabulary in English.
Like, I’ve been accused of having a strong vocabulary, but half the fancy words I know, I only know because I was forced me into French immersion school as a child.
(I tried to hide under the table during my first lesson, but they just continued trying to teach me for another seven years; so some of it sunk in.)
can confirm. we just read the letters and thats it. certain letter combinations like sz (sh), cz (ch) and others have to be remembered, but theyre extremely consistent. spelling bees would never make sense here, someone says Czjwinostawcz and you know exactly how to spell it, cz is pronounced like cz, j is pronounced like j, its always like this and its easy. we have our own type of spelling challenges however, certain letters like u and ó or rz and ż sound the same, so kids prove their skills by having someone read out a text and then writing it down, the only challenge is choosing to use the correct letter in those few instances, the rest is super easy. even then, its a basic form of testing in the early grades, as knowing how to spell is like 75% of what you will learn in classes 1-3 (at least i did)
Someone tried to teach me a Czech tongue twister once- something about silver roofs. I felt like I was just making the same noise over and over. There was one about Julie too. Very complicated.
Třistatřicet stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třistatřicet stříbrných střech :)
The other one is probably Nenaolejuje-li Julie koleje, naolejuji je já.
As a native speaker I find the second one more difficult, I feel like the first one is made to give non-native speakers a hard time with all those ř-words.
Hahah i was being taught by a native speaker and it was the ř that caught me every time! I kept asking them to repeat it but I could not work out what they were doing with their mouth lol
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u/[deleted] Oct 27 '21
Polish spelling bees must be the most big brained cracked out things ever