2022-05-25
27 分钟Coming up on Word Matters, a special guest who says all the words right.
I'm Emily Brewster,
and Word Matters is produced by Merriam-Webster in collaboration with New England Public Media.
On each episode, Merriam-Webster editors Amin Shea, Peter Sokolowski,
and I explore some aspect of the English language from the dictionary's vantage point.
Jacques Bailey has been the official pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2003,
23 years after winning the bee himself.
A professor in the classics department at the University of Vermont, his language expertise is vast.
Peter introduces us.
We have talked about dictionaries from so many perspectives,
but there's one important thing I don't think we've mentioned yet, which is... spelling bees.
To have a spelling bee is important to have a dictionary.
And I remember the first time I attended the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C.,
and I was in the room, this dark room, 2000 people around, you're on TV live.
And what I heard was definitions read over and over, kind of like this abstract poetry.
But there's a very kind of particular style of a Merriam-Webster definition.
And I felt like I was the only one in the room who was hearing this as a kind of call to home.
And the voice who was reading those definitions was the voice of Professor Jacques Bailey,
who is the announcer of the Scripps National Spelling Bee,
and has been for many years, and he's our guest for this edition of Word Matters.