On Oct. 5, people will be congregating at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Square. Like most Thursday nights in college towns, there will be socializing, drinking at the Brattle's cash bar, and a relaxed and fun atmosphere.
There's only one difference: People will be there for a spelling bee.
The bee is a joint effort between the Brattle Theater, the Harvard Book Store and Houghton-Mifflin Books. It will entail an "All-Ages Spelling Bee," at 6:30 p.m. (which, ironically, is only for children up to the age of 14), followed by a screening of "A Boy Named Charlie Brown," the classic film in which Charlie Brown reaches the spelling bee finals. An adult spelling bee will follow at 9:30.
Tickets to watch the bees are $10, while the "Grown-Up Bee" has an entrance fee of $5 (the All-Ages Bee is free to enter). Proceeds go to the Preserve the Brattle Legacy Campaign.
Steve Kleinedler, senior editor of the American Heritage Dictionary, will be hosting the bees.
Kleinedler, who was mentioned in a New York Times article on the rise of "hip, young lexicographers," hosts spelling bees a few times a year as publicity for the dictionary. "We tend to do adult spelling bees because in the past, we tended to do them at conferences and whatnot attended by adults," Kleinedler said.
So what type of words might Kleinedler ask adult contestants to spell? Though he refused to give away his favorites, one example he used was "chaebol," the American Heritage Dictionary definition of which is "a conglomerate of businesses, usually owned by a single family, especially in Korea."
Though it might be chock-full of obscure words that seem designed only to stump spelling bee participants, Kleinedler explained that this particular event will be different than most. "It's going to be much more laid-back than something that was done at a convention hall," Kleinedler said. Might that be because of the cash bar?
Well, yes, but there are other differences as well: "It's less competitive than the nationals because the stakes are much lower," Kleinedler said. "We're not giving away hundreds of thousands of dollars in prizes or scholarships; we're giving away dictionaries and other books, maybe some small gift certificates."
The non-competitive aspect of the bee will translate to what Kleinedler described as "a much friendlier atmosphere" than many spelling bees. "I think it's going to be a lot of fun," he said.
Junior Katie Ray, a psychology major who is interested in linguistics, agreed: "I would go to the spelling bee," she said. "I've always thought they were really interesting.""
So will Ray be participating in the bee next Thursday? "I consider myself a pretty good speller, though probably not spelling bee-quality," she said, laughing.
An interest in words isn't the only reason to show up to the bee. "It's for a good cause," Kleinedler said. "Besides just supporting the Brattle Theater, which has struggled in the last year, this is also promoting literacy and awareness of dictionaries in general," Kleinedler said.
Though Kleinedler doesn't want to "paint an entire generation with a wide brush," he does admit that "it would certainly seem to be the case" that language and communication skills have been decreasing in American English. "You hear the horror stories of kids entering college who can't construct a sentence, or can't construct an essay, or can't write a coherent thought," he said.
Kleinedler admits, however, that "people have been complaining about the state of the language for the past two thousand years."
Kleinedler, though, enjoys the English language, so much so that he had a phonetic vowel chart tattooed on his right shoulder blade in 1993.
As a practical lexicographer, Kleinedler actively works to update the English language at the American Heritage Dictionary. Though he works in a small field - Kleinedler cited a New York Times approximation of 200 to 400 people in lexicography as "a high estimate" - lexicography still plays an important role in the use of language in America.
While in France, language might be regulated by the Acad?©mie Fran?§aise, founded in 1635, Kleinedler dismisses such rigid restrictions on language. "You can't regulate language," he said. "It's like trying to hold back the tide with sand.
"Language shifts, it changes, it's living, it evolves," Kleinedler said. "If it didn't, we'd all still be speaking Latin or proto-Indo-European."
Kleinedler's job involves trying to keep up with such changes. Analyzing the ways in which current words are used, Kleinedler decides when slang has "crossed over" to become proper English - if a word appears in the New York Times without quotations or an explanation, for example - as well as keeping up-to-date with changes in a word's sense.
"For example ... we have a college dictionary, a high school dictionary, a student dictionary, a children's dictionary, science dictionaries; as each of these reprint, the whole planet-Pluto issue has to be taken care of," Kleinedler said.
Still, Kleinedler isn't sitting at his desk looking at words on index cards all the time. When he's not hosting spelling bees or deciding whether "Google" is an official verb, Kleinedler works on other books and flexes his vocabulary skills at Improv Boston, where he directs a troupe as well as teaching classes. (One member of his improvisational comedy troupe, Kleinedler pointed out, is a Tufts graduate and former member of Cheap Sox, the Tufts improv-comedy group.)
"It helps me immensely with bees or other public events [and] speaking on the radio," Kleinedler said. "When I do live interviews, I actually come off without stuttering."
Currently, Kleinedler has also been helping with the "100 Words" book series, the most recent of which is "100 Words to Make You Sound Smart." Included on the list are "boondoggle," "panacea," and "Svengali."
Despite his extensive knowledge of such esoteric (also on the "100 Words" list) vocabulary and his abundant bee experience, Kleinedler admits that he's not a human spell-check. In fact, he is bothered by a much more common word: plain old "guard." "Any time I need to use that word, I have to look it up," Kleinedler said. "For the life of me, I can't remember how to spell it."
Perhaps he should include that on next Thursday's list.
