LogFAQs > #922605168

Spelling bees are not about your mastery of English.

Maybe they were at some point, but now they ask weird words that no native English speaker would use, they're basically greek/latin/arab words that happen to be in the English dictionary.

You don't get good at spelling bee by knowing the English language. You get good by developing a system where you know the greek/latin/persian roots for words (e.g. Orthography comes from the greek ORTHOs which means good and GRAPHos, which means writing, and Orthopedist comes from ORTHOs and PEDOS, which means feet, or something like that) and then what suffixed can come from them.

It's not an american thing anymore, not more than a latin writing competition.