December 07, 2004
How do you spell first place? B-R-O-W-NNews
South Asian youngsters continue to nerd their way to fame and fortune:
A 13-year-old girl has beaten 100,000 hopefuls to become the best young speller in the UK.
Gayathri Kumar, from Lancashire, correctly spelt words including troglodyte and disequilibrium to win the BBC’s Hard Spell competition.
Whom did Gayathri defeat? Wait for it…
The final, shown on BBC One on Sunday night, saw Gayathri go head-to-head with the other finalist, Nisha Thomas.
We have to do something about this brown-on-brown violence. I kid. So how did Gayathri best Nisha?
Gayathri, from Ormskirk, took the title when she correctly spelt Chihuahua and Nisha stumbled over dachshund.
Don’t dog Gayathri with accusations of arrogance:
Gayathri told BBC Breakfast on Monday: “I’m quite surprised that I won, I am really happy and elated.
“I didn’t expect to get this far, I thought I’d just make a careless mistake, and that would be it.”
When I was little, my father forced me to enter spelling bees all the time; when I lost the Scripps-Howard contest, he was livid. “You could’ve won the grand prize Encyclopedia Brittanica!”, he’d hiss at me, until I was 23. Perhaps if my spelling bee had cooler prizes, say…a trip to RIO (!), I might’ve been a bit more motivated…
Gayathri, a pupil at Merchant Taylor School for Girls, has won a holiday of her choice, £5,000 of media equipment for her school and the Hard Spell trophy.
The teenager says she was helped by her father Suresh Panikker to prepare for the competition and made sure she was not caught out by learning plant, food and medical terms.Gayathri kept a file of spellings which she carried with her at all times, for quick revision.
…She said: “I really wanted to win Hard Spell because I know it would make my dad really proud and I’d like to go on holiday somewhere like Russia or Brazil.
Oh Gayathri, not only is your Dad ridiculously proud (I’m sure he’s called three continents to brag about you), you’ve just saved yourself a lifetime of nagging. Trust me. Congrats, by the way. Go you.
anna on December 7, 2004 11:55 PM in Humor, News · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
malayalees just aren't destined to win spelling bee contests.
malayalees just aren't destined to win spelling bee contests.
tell that to the girl who beat me, raga ramachandran. she won the national title, was on Johnny Carson, met the president, etc. 100% malayalee. why do you think my dad was so bitter? ;)
let me guess, our DNA has a gene that prevents us from spelling well? i know it has one that inspires some horrific names.
ok, i guess her last name prepped her....
upon reflection, the winner's father's name (Suresh Panikker) sounds somewhat malayalee...i know a priest w/the same surname (Panicker).
you are right, all references to 'panikker' seem kerala related. spelling is only about memorization :)
Actually, all the people in that article had non-simple names. "Ormskirk" ? "Eamonnn"? What's a simple name? Raju. Pinky ;) See - simple
Ennis
Ormskirk is a perfectly fine name. Its a town in the north west of England. I've been there once. Nice countryside and a beach not too far away. Theres probably a New Ormskirk somewhere in America, that land of cities without original names, eg: Washington. New York, Birmingham etc etc ;-)
I welcome Gayathri to the circle of champions, of which I am a longstanding member...3rd grade Kentucky State Spelling Champion, circa 1983.
There's nothing like beating the other indian kid in the state and a bunch of rednecks...
The hardware still sits on my trophy shelf at home in the basement...dusty as hell, but never forgotten...
For those about to spell (Gayathri)...I salute you!
PS...Anna, I wish I could invite you to the club, but I gues that yoo jhust were not ment too sit at the kool kids tabel...
actually i am a malayalee
actually i am from kerala as well as my opponent nisha so even if i DID lose malyalees are destined to win spelling competitions
you tell him, gayathri! :D
My mom's father was a Panneker (another spelling.) I prefer the spelling Panicker because it is an appropriate description of my mom's personality! ;)
-D
(And it's not the name the family actually used, so don't try and steal all my credit card info!)
*comment deleted by ANNA*
if you have a problem with this, take it up with me personally.
Gayathri,
Congratulations from the Indian Community in Australia. You make us proud to be Indians.
All the very best for your future.
Rajesh
im sorry, but maybe it was just coincidence. i know gayathri well and i am very proud of her sucsess, she may have darker skin than us but she is very much like everybody else (except her phenominal knowledge of spellings! so congrats gaya3. we r all dead proud of ya!!!! from T
o yea gayathri just red ur thing. u no hu i am mwah ha ha. nyway 4get thoz wierd ppl bein mean 2 u!!! nyway if u read dis soonish i am VV sorri u no wot i mean. so nyway gtg. biXX t
personally, i think gayathri did an amzing job, and any1 who DARES insult her on this will here from me as 1 of her close friends
Indians have been reppin' at Spelling Bees for some time now...
4 out of 5 are desis (including Thampy). Nupur Lala even had a documentary made after her....and to testify to the abilities of desi-american youngsters, there's another indian kid in the sample of 8. hahaha!
SpellBound documentary:
http://www.documentaryfilms.net/Reviews/Spellbound/oldindex.htm
list of champs:
http://www.spellingbee.com/bwg/statschamp.shtml
i see "bob natarajan" and "rageshree ramachandran" in the 80's...someone should do a statistical analysis of this list...
damn....you really gotta check out the list for that year. it's a brownout. chinese also overrepresented.
http://www.spellingbee.com/bwg/stats.shtml
from the 2 & 3 year repeat state champs:
Speller 64, Ashwini A. Gokhale
Speller 139, Rajiv Tarigopula
Speller 238, Samir Sudhir Patel
Speller 239, Nidharshan S. Anandasivam
Speller 20, Anurag Kashyap
Speller 22, Kendra Guthrie Yoshinaga
Speller 36, Maithreyi Gopalakrishnan
Speller 67, Abraham H. Lee
Speller 71, Bonny Jain
Speller 113, Sahiti Surapaneni
Speller 124, Jamie Ding
Speller 127, Nilesh K. Raval
Speller 136, Jessy J. Hwang
Speller 149, Arjun R. Modi
Speller 185, Saptarshi Chaudhuri
Speller 203, Nathan Jun Yang
Speller 240, Anjay Ajodha
Speller 265, Yiping Wang
is there really such a thing as 'overrepresented' in a spelling bee?
are there quotas or something that i'm not aware of?
anyways
props to a kid who can spell...god knows the only reason i spell anything correctly is b/c i check to see if it has a squiggly red line under it.
Gayathri needs to make some new friends who can spell ;)
i'm sorry but hav u nvr heard of txt language?????
not only have i *heard* of it, besides a few choice acronyms, i despise it, unless i'm reading it ON my phone screen, which is the only place such mangling belongs, IMO.
"txt language" evolved b/c of the constraints of texting; you're in a hurry and you don't have a lot of space. well, when commenting here, the former is entirely your call but the latter? we give you PLENTY of space. :) there is no character limit on SM comments-- though some may assert there should be. ;)
oh, and i've been meaning to ask-- WTF is this all about:
manish may be worried about spelling skills, i'm more disturbed by THAT.
text language is FINE... on your cell phone and instant messenger. And with T9 available, it is actually easier and faster to spell words correctly on the phone.
Reminds me of the resume I received from a potential employee that read:
I do hope that u consider me in ur search. Thx.
That resume never quite made it to the second round. And the icing on the cake was that it was from a *grad student* ...
to anna do not be disturbed or whatever you said. i am not actually indian. i didnt actually mean any harm. anyway point being i was in a hurry on the 'text speak' thing because i had to get offline soonish. ps what do you mean by "nerd their way to fame and fortune?????" GAYATHRI IS NOT A NERD!!!!!!
o yea. 2 manish vij or hueva u r. i woz actually thru the first round of spelling. so HA ;-D
yes, but WE are nerds and gang recognise gang, in the bang bang... ;)
ain't no shame in our NERDY game. :)
so you're just too lazy to type out your own thoughts in full text? Or have you been on AOL so long that you forgot how to un-abbreviate?