Language competitions

[Jellyfish]

In the US there are these spelling competitions for kids quite a common thing and we all know of school competitions. But is there anything else like that you know of?

[Czarownica]

Those American spelling competitions always seemed weird to me

In Poland we have something called "dyktando": somebody reads a text aloud and people (children, most of the time, it can also be a test) are supposed to write it down correctly. It checks people's knowledge of ortography and interpunction.

[Daedalus]

We have that in the Netherlands as well, we call it 'dictee'. Most often used in schools, but once a year, around Christmas time, some of the biggest newspapers together with a Dutch and a Belgian tv network organise one. It's written by a celebrity Dutch writer, usually with a very high difficulty. Half of the contestants are celebrities, the other half are 'normal people', who scored the highest in an initial test.

[sayitwell]

I used to compete in the American spelling competitions when I was younger.  Looking back, I feel that it was a waste of time and effort.  Who cares if you know how to spell a bunch of words?  It is a nearly useless skill. 

[kitkat0124]

In our school here in our country we call it spelling quiz bee, the winner will compete with other schools. The winner will compete to regional then national is the last. There is a representative from grade one to high school.

[Jellyfish]

We have that too, it's called Diktat here. But I meant more real special competitions and not just such for kids.

[Sness]

We don't have spell competitions here in my country. There is no interest from the goverment to foment  any of the humanist subjects, in fact they are reducing the pedagogical hours little by little. So schools tend to aproach the scientific side more because math olympics and scientific fairs improve the subsidy the school gets.

[thekernel]

I won the grade 8 spelling bee. I even got to compete further in the provincials competition but bowed out on the word "battalion". Even in this thread people say it's a useless skill, but my proficiency garnered me a 25 dollar gift card for Chapters.

[BWL]

When I was a child, we had  听写 or ting xie (dictation) during our Chinese language classes. The teacher would dictate a list of words (the characters would have been taught to pupils the week before, so everyone was expected to memorize them) to the pupils and we would have to write them down correctly. Any mistake would be a punishable offense!

[deyvion]

I actually wish that Sweden had that competitive spirit in school. Here 'everyone is a winner', and 'children should not compete against each other'. I would have loved to have competitions such as spelling bee's, etc.

[Jellyfish]

  On 9/16/2013 at 12:56 PM, deyvion said:

I actually wish that Sweden had that competitive spirit in school. Here 'everyone is a winner', and 'children should not compete against each other'. I would have loved to have competitions such as spelling bee's, etc.

Lol, that sounds exactly like the prejudices we all have from that country. Still one of my favourite places to live.

[mareebaybay]

I am pretty sure there are language competitions in the US. There should be a easy way to find out directly by doing a quick search using a engine and your state.

[Kotro]

I don't believe we have nothing of the sort in Portugal, at least to my knowledge. Closest thing we have to a language competition would be some translation context, but those are mostly held at academia and college-level (though some may exist at high-school level).