| When I was in school, we had spelling quizzes every Monday. "Dictation tests," we called them. We would have read some chapters from our English text book and our teacher would have underlined some difficult words in the chapter. We would have the weekend to learn to spell those underlined words and first thing Monday morning, we would take Dictation. Mrs. Fernandes would say a word out loud and we would write it down in our test books. Dictation was my f-a-v-o-u-r-i-t-e (British spelling) part of school. It has been many years since I took dictation tests. I was introduced to the world of Spelling Bees by my friend's 8-year old, who was furiously memorizing endless lists of words. I was at once impressed and pleased to see how seriously school children took these Spelling Bees. There was even a movie about Spelling Bees that made these competitions even more popular. A big advocate of the English language, I approved of the system. On a slightly different note, have you been listening to the radio lately? Channel Z104, in particular. For those of you who haven't, this channel mainly plays hip-hop music. Some of my undergraduate friends, who actually think that it is okay for me to hang out with them, got me completely addicted to this station. Every week, there are at least a couple of new songs that are played. Lately, I've been noticing a trend in all these songs. For a long time (about a month, I think) Nellie Furtado's "Promiscuous Girl" was on the top of the charts. Every club played this song; everyone knew the lyrics to the song. "Promiscuous" suddenly became a very "cool" word to use; every new song that came out had the word "promiscuous" in it. Soon, the artists started making up new words -- Fergilicious -- which is supposed to be a combination of the artist's name, Fergie, and "Delicious." Witty, eh? The song had the right amount of attitude, and was fun to listen to. Delicious Fergie, however, went a step further (beyond just coining new words) and decided to compete with our little Spelling Bee wonders. She started spelling words in her song and not surprisingly, every song that came out after "Fergilicious" had words that were spelt out. Incredibly witty, especially when the meter's just right. Now, one would think that this would be a great way to learn to spell; I mean all the songs are fun to listen to and if one ignored the context of these words in the songs, hip-hop artists might just have invented/discovered/revolutionized the newest way to learn to spell! There is a slight problem, though. Unfortunately, it looks like only a few hip-hop artists took spelling bees seriously when they went to school. A lot of words are just spelt wrong (even though they fit the meter). So parents, beware of letting your p-r-e-c-i-o-u-s children listen to too much radio, at least for a little while. Let them study for their spelling bees from prescribed books (check who authored those books, though). Hip-hop artists, I hope you will continue to write more and more groovy songs, but it just might help to peek into a Spell Bee book, once in a while! Signing off: 'R' to the 'A,' to the 'M,' to the 'Y,' to the ' A,' it's Ramya!! |
| Creative Syncopations/Ramya Kapadia Spell B-E-E |
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