I think the US and England are the only countries that have spelling contests. For other languages, like French, German, and Spanish, if you can pronounce the word you can spell it. This is because they have rules of pronunciation that don't change per word. Chinese pinyin is the same, if you know the pinyin system and can pronounce the word, then you can spell it out in pinyin.(Knowing the correct characters is another story.)
This situation leads to some interesting problems when a new word is added to French, German, Spanish or Chinese. The pronunciation/spelling has to change to respect the rules of pronunciation of that language. Sometimes the new pronunciation is similar but sometimes not. Ask any Chinese speaker for the Chinese pronunciation of these words and see if you can recognize the name:
Seattle
Vancouver
Christopher Columbus
Sophia Loren
Prince William
But at least by changing the pronunciation, these languages save themselves from the spectacle of spelling contests.
On the other hand, English, the language of England, has a different mode, they accept both the pronunciation of the new word and the spelling of the new word in its native language. This corrupts whatever rules of pronunciation that English could claim. As a language of foreign rulers(Norman French, Hanover Kings, ... ) and the ruled(America, India, ... ) English has accumulated so many foreign words that it has very inconsistent rules of pronunciations. This is what makes learning English the bane of the rest of the world. Here is a typical list of in consistencies for the Wenlin English-Chinese dictionary:
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The following are a few of the many spelling/ pronunciation ambiguities in English that the student should be aware of.
Spelling Pronunciation Example
c- [s] cell
[k] call
ch- [ tS ] cheese
[k] character
g- [g] go, gun
ge- [ dZ ] gentle
gh- [g] ghost
gu- [g] guard
h- [h] have
[ hw ] white
ho- [ hoU ] hotel
[A] honest
kn- [n] knife, know
ph- [f] photo
pn- [n] pneumonia
ps- [s] pseudo
qu- [ kw ] quick
sc- [ sk ] scan
[s] scene
wh- [h] who, whole
[w] white
[ hw ] white (variants)
wr- [r] write, wrong
I particular like these examples:
bee an insect
be to be or not to be
beauty pronounced at your discretion
reminbi the currency of China spelt with pinyin!
in each of them there is a BE but the spelling is all
inconsistent.
I feel spelling contests are just a memorial to an inconsistency, surely there are more useful uses of our time.
And now for something completely different. In pinyin spelling the tone of each word is convey by a diacritical mark above the most important vowel, like
second tone áéó
third tone ǎěǒ
fourth tone àèò
no tone aeo
My eyes are not as good as they use to be so I've been experimenting with color to convey the tone. My scheme as in the text below:
First tone, high, blue because the sky is high
Second tone, rising, yellow because the sun rises
Third tone, falling then rising, green because the falling rising are like branches of tree
Fourth tone, red, because fourth tone is most important.
No tone, black, same as in pinyin
下個月五號是你二十一歲的生日, 我們應該好好地 慶祝慶祝.
xiage yue wu hao shi ni ershiyi suide shengri, women yinggai hao hao de qingzhu qingzhu.
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