Spelling spotlight

 

To bee or not to bee ... that was never the question.

All the student finalists gathered in the Tuba City Boarding School gymnasium March 11 for the finals of the Navajo Nation Spelling Bee had already proved themselves in their respective grades - fourth through eighth - and were now facing off for the right to represent the Navajo Nation in the National Scripps Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.

"All of you are winners," Navajo Times publisher Tom Arviso Jr. told the contestants. "There are no losers here."

The bee was sponsored by the Navajo Times and the Navajo Nation's Department of Youth Development. The national finals will be held May 31 to June 6 in Washington.

Students from the five agencies represented their schools in hopes that all their time spent practicing would spell success.

The words ranged from easy ("hogan") to tricky ("sayonara"). The official pronouncer for the grade 6-8 spell-off was Marlita Haviland, a counselor at Shonto Preparatory School.

She carefully pronounced each word from a list provided by Scripps - but there was a touch of controversy.

Students who received words that could be confused with similar sounding but different words were given definitions by Haviland.

"They all need to have the same, fair chance," Crownpoint teacher Mary Morgan said, as the contest broke for lunch. "The definitions could have helped everyone that missed a word."

Morgan said she had no students in the bee and was mentioning it as an issue of fairness.

Official rules of the spelling bee allow for students to ask for a definition. Morgan's point was that Haviland offered some of the contestants definitions whether they asked or not.

Haviland said she followed the suggested guidelines from Scripps that say if two words sounded the same - for example "fair" and "fare" - the pronouncer should consider including a definition so the student knows which word to spell.

Serious business

The spelling bee was serious business.

"Our kids started practicing in October," said Labby Shepard, Tsaile Public School counselor. "It's very competitive."

The buzz surrounding the bee seemed to center on Chinle Junior High eighth-grader Esther Aruguete. Her older brother, Joey, won the bee several years ago. This year was Esther's last chance at the prize, and younger brother Abraham, a fourth-grader, was among the competitors.

Was she confident after breezing through the eighth-grade spell-off?

"Confident? No, I'm not," Esther said, laughing. "My brother is a pretty good speller!"

Some in the crowd thought that Esther Aruguete should have won the bee last year, when she spelled a homonym instead of the actual word she was asked.

In linguistics, a homonym is one of a group of words that share the same pronunciation, but has a different meaning and usually a different spelling - just the trap that Haviland was trying to help spellers avoid this year.

"She lost on a technicality," one observer said of Esther Aruguete.

The spell-off grand finale started off with Moencopi Day School sixth-grader Emmarie Comaad correctly spelling "candidate."

The pronouncer was Navajo Times reporter Cindy Yurth.

The words came fast and furious: "daffodil," "flotilla," "hassock" and "pumpernickel."

The first cut from the final field came when a student misspelled "salami."

Some in the audience noted that some of the words were "baloney," meaning words that kids on the Navajo Reservation would likely have never heard, seen or imagined.

One word was "yacht." The student repeated the word as if it was from another planet, before venturing a wild guess - "Y-o-t?" So much for the phonetic approach.

Holding true to form, the Aruguetes - Esther and Abraham - rattled off correct spellings for several rounds. It was Abraham that slipped up first, bowing out in fourth place.

"Did I make you proud?" Abraham asked as he took a seat in the bleachers beside his dad, Moses.

"Yes, all you guys did good," Moses said.

"Stucco" proved to be the word that finally tripped up Lukachukai Community School fifth-grader Shaila Ben, who finished third.

At the end of round 8, only two spellers remained - Esther Aruguete and Emmarie Comaad.

In round 9, Emmarie spelled, "Democracy." "Pretzel," Esther said, keeping pace.

Round 10: "Antibiotic." "Tofu."

Emmarie correctly spelled "confetti" in round 11. Esther rushed on the word "denim."

"D-e-n-i-n ... um, m!" The judges conferred briefly, but the rules call for accepting the first letter a student utters.

"She tried to rush in," Moses Aruguete said. "One of the main things is to slow down."

It came down to one: Emmarie.

When she correctly spelled "algebra" she became the champion speller of the Navajo Nation.

"I was not expecting it," said Emmarie's mom, Carmen.

It wasn't that she doubted her daughter but Emmarie, who is originally from the Philippines, is a newcomer to English.

"This is her third language," Carmen noted.

Emmarie speaks two different Filipino dialects and has been learning English since moving to the states last July.

"I was nervous a lot," Emmarie said.

Now she's even more nervous, with her first ever visit to the nation's capital looming.

And what of Esther?

She blamed no one but herself.

"I rushed," she said.

She had immediately caught her own error - but it was too late.

Emmarie's slow and steady pace - she asked for definitions for nearly all of her words - outlasted Esther's rapid-fire style. It's the old story of the tortoise beating the hare.

By a hair.

Back to top ^