Thursday, December 6, 2007

How do you spell Channukkahh?

In elementary school, I was once ousted from a spelling bee for spelling it "Hanukah". I don't know why a religious event (and proper noun) should've been included in this bee at a public school, but whatever. I still don't know how to spell it. And it's nice to know that I'm not the only one.

4 comments:

srah said...

Is there even an established official spelling for English? With words that originate in non-Latin alphabets, you pretty much get to guess at how that would be transliterated into your own particular language. That's why you see Koran/Qu'ran and Qaddafi/Gaddafi too.

Ricky D said...

srah hit it already. There should not be an official spelling...

It bothers me that it was a word in a spelling bee.

Perhaps the administration set you up to fail. I'd look into it. Just another instance of the man trying to keep you down.

srah said...

My dad was eliminated from an elementary school spelling bee for spelling "pajamas" as "pyjamas", a spelling which he learned from his English mother.

Ricky D said...

In the fourth grade I got eighth place in our school spelling bee. Mostly seventh and eighth graders were left besides me. Proud moment for me, I guess. My ousting word? "Illusion." Why did I get it wrong? I thought the judge said "allusion."

Oops.