I must confess that I had quite a negative view of GT&T. This stemmed from the fact that too many times (at least in the past) the company was at the forefront of entertainment and not education. Yes, I am cognisant of the fact there are scholarship progarmmes, but I always felt that just that little bit more could be done, ever so often.
Well I am happy that my ‘silent negative view’ probably had a telepathic influence. When I learned that The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company ( GT& T), in collaboration with the Education Ministry, officially launched the National Spelling Bee 2011 Competition on Monday at the Theatre Guild, Kingston, I was really overwhelmed. I had a good reason for this too.
In every language, spelling is a challenge. Currently in Guyana, this challenge has been ever intensifying. English, like any other language, is not in a one-to-one relationship where sounds and ‘spelling letters’ (the alphabet) go ‘hand-in-hand.’ Let me illustrate. ‘Hate’ rhymes with ‘eight,’ but please notice that the ‘a’ sound in ‘hate’ has the actual letter ‘a’ while in eight, the ‘a’ sound is represented by the letters ‘eigh.’ I can think of myriads of examples in this regard. Take another case: ‘might’ and ‘height’ rhyme, but the ‘ai’ sound is captured differently- ‘i’ for the might, but ‘eigh’ for the word height. Wow! So I am looking forward to the actual competition even as I offer congratulations to GT&T, as it offers support to education, by teaming up with the Ministry of Education.
The second factor that comes to my mind, as I think about the co-operative venture is the fact that language use in Guyana is in a state of great flux. Many people resort to spell checks, and inevitably, the computer ‘corrects’ according to the American Standard. In Guyana, the standard practice is to use the British Standard Version. Here is where some kind of amended policy may be needed. Should the ‘s’ now become ‘z’ as in words like analyse/lyze, organize/ize etc. And what about disambiguating practice and practise, advice and advise, and licence and license, where ‘c’ and ‘s’ in the British Standard separates nouns from verbs, while in the American Standard, this difference is not significant. Mind you, I am not saying that one version is correct; it is just that young learners must be given a yard stick to use.
The competition will target all Grade Five students across Guyana, and I gather from this that the aim is to ‘get them while they are young. The spelling bee competition is not just about orthography alone, but involves some etymology, which hopefully will develop better studying habits. With the finals slated for September 28 at the National Cultural Centre, my hope is that the event be publicly monitored, via live radio and television. Wouldn’t this be awesome? I think so.