Spelling Bee 2023

The Linguinis, a team representing the Linguistcs  Department, participated in the 11th New Haven Reads Spelling Bee, and did great — in fact, they made it to the final round, and won! Please join me in congratulating them!

 

The team members were two of our undergraduate students, Jem Burch and Conan Thibodeau, and our Fulbright visitor from Lausanne, Jessica Brown. They did great all along. They won their initial round along with another team, as they each provided an acceptable spelling of the word  holism / wholism. They then went on to win the final round by being the only team that spelled the word stromuhr correctly. They might have known the word before going into the Spelling Bee, but luck and willingness to prepare also played a role (as they always do!), because this very  word had come up in the practice session a day earlier! 

 

The name Linguinis was quite successful too.  The MC sometimes would call our team by its name, other times would say “Let’s bring the Linguistics back on stage” — I guess the root that  linguinis and linguistics  share got him tongue-tied…

 

Many thanks to the team members for being willing to take on the challenge, to Jessica and Alara for designing the logo for the team, to all who attended the practices session and/or the event, and to Priscilla for all of her hard work to make this possible. 

 

Best,

 

Raffaella