First National Spanish Spelling Bee Held in USA.

The first ever national Spanish Spelling Bee was held over the weekend, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The implementation of a national competition in Spanish is, for many, recognition of the multilingual character of the United States. Indeed, the inaugural Bee, organized by the Alliance for Multilingual Multicultural Education (AMME) and the New Mexico Association for Bilingual Education (NMABE), aimed to celebrate the ever increasing presence of Spanish within the country’s multicultural society.

Participants were asked to spell outloud words randomly chosen from a list that had been provided to them beforehand. The winning word, ‘bizantinismo’ which refers to the Byzantine era, and has come to be associated with the idea of excess luxury, was correctly spelled by 13 year old Evelyn Juarez; after her opponent was defeated by the word “kanindeyuense” a word relating to the origins of someone from the Paraguayan department of Kanindeyú.

From a linguistics standpoint, some queried whether the Spanish Spelling Bee presented less of a challenge than an English one. The English language, has a more complex morpho-phonemic nature, the spelling often differs from the way in which words are pronounced. Spanish orthography, on the other hand, is generally considered to be simpler. It is often the case with the Spanish language that every letter has a unique phoneme, so generally words are spelt phonetically, i.e. exactly as they sound. Such is the case with words such as “litro”, “rampa” or “amor”.

However, the organizers of the competition highlighted the fact that whilst the sounds of the language clearly play an important part, so too do the rules of the language. They also placed an emphasis on the impact that different Spanish accents might have on contestants, especially when differentiating between ‘s’ and ‘z’. Indeed one participant fell at the first hurdle, confusing the two sounds, when presented with the word ‘zulo’, which means ‘hideout’ in English.

The competition was considered a huge success in promoting the use of the Spanish language- increasing the awareness and understanding of Spanish vocabulary, word origins and cultural concepts. Although modest for now, with the participation of local young people from Colorado, Texas, Oregon and Minnesota and several states confirmed for future editions, the Spanish Spelling Bee promises to grow in popularity.