Kids aren't the only ones studying for Friday's Howard County Library Spelling Bee.
Patrick Clancy, a Washington lawyer who has been recruited to be this year's "pronouncer," has been spending quite a bit of time with words, too.
Fifty-one pupils, winners in their school spelling bees, will compete at 7 p.m. at Jim Rouse Theatre at Wilde Lake High School in the second regional competition. The winner will earn a $1,000 scholarship and a trip to the May 28-June 2 National Spelling Bell in Washington. The runner-up will earn a $750 prize.
As pronouncer, Clancy's job is to say aloud the words that the competitors will spell. If the spellers ask, he must also repeat the word, give a definition, tell its part of speech, use the word in a sentence, and give its language of origin.
All that information is provided in the 2006 Sponsor Bee Guide Book I provided by Scripps-Howard, which sets the structure for the regional and national competitions, he said.
"You read through the words and then you note words that are problematic for whatever reason and you go back and you focus on those words," Clancy said. "I'm spending certainly a certain amount of time each day."
He said the task is harder than it looked at first glance. The spelling bee guide, which is based on Webster's Third International Dictionary, comes with pronunciation symbols -- and the dictionary Web site even has a pronunciation function -- but preparing for the event is still tough.
Even words that look simple can have different pronunciations based on their parts of speech, Clancy noted. He wouldn't give examples because he didn't want to give any words away, but a word such as "live" falls into this category, changing pronunciation if it is used as a verb or adjective.
Even words he thinks he knows can be tricky because they must be pronounced as they would be in spoken American English, he said. So a word like "graduated," for example, is pronounced "graduaded" in spoken English, he said. "Mitten" is another example of a word that is pronounced differently when it is read aloud, compared with when it is spoken.
"There's a distinction between reading a word and saying a word, and that's the challenge I'm finding as a pronouncer," he said. "You're to pronounce the word as it is spoken in American English."
While pupils must study 5,000 words from a book called the Paiedia, Clancy needs to know only about 500, he said. But the pronunciations are important, and all ears will be on him to make sure he doesn't goof.
