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After dodgeball, Darwin-free biology lessons and the nagging fear of being shot, the aspect of American schooling I find hardest to explain to British people is the spelling bee. Thanks to my omnivorous reading habits and memory for print (in a world where books were the only trustworthy friends), I was doomed to a career as a spelling bee champion. At my zenith, aged 11, I won a tri-county competition, and would have advanced to state level if someone at my school district hadn't messed up the paperwork.
All this brought me no advantage in later life. I'd have been better off having a rich dad.
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The Japanese verb 綴る (tsuzuru) is thought to derive from 続く (tsuzuku), meaning “to continue.” All of its meanings refer to gathering parts together to create or restore something. It can mean “to bind” (pages together to make a book), “to patch” (torn clothing to make it whole again), “to write” (one word after another to compose a message), or “to spell” (putting kana and kanji together to make a word). 綴り is the noun form, and only means “spelling.”
This is very different from the origin of the English verb “spell,” which comes from a root meaning “speech.” And yes, it's essentially the same word as in “magic spell.”
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I can't tell you how many spelling bees I took part in, because they've all melded into two memories. In one, I'm pressing my clammy hands to my knees and fighting nausea in some strange gymnasium. In the other, I'm gripping the back of a kitchen chair, trying to remember whether the word my mother has just read out from the practice list is “brooch” or “broach.”
“Brooch” is a word I've heard my grandmother use. My mother’s annoyed with her; if she pronounced it to rhyme with “pooch,” we wouldn't have this problem. “Broach” is unknown to me except from this list, but I might get it in the first round.
I guess wrong. I'll go under if I'm not more careful.
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I found it easy to adapt to British spellings when I moved to the UK. I'd read British (and Canadian) books since childhood, and the extra “u"s and reversed “-re"s had filled me with yearning. Surely colours had a deeper hue than colors; surely this distant world, where basic words were recognisable and yet different, was the one where I truly belonged.
Needless to say, that particular spell was soon broken.
But nowadays I feel uneasy when I encounter American spellings, as if I sensed a dark force.
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Most Japanese people can't spell their names letter by letter the way English speakers can. In Japan, personal names are generally written with kanji, and kanji aren't letters. Two people with identical-sounding names may write them with entirely different kanji (which may also have very different meanings); parents often choose them because of personal or family significance. So Fukuyama Masaharu's given name is written 雅治, meaning “elegant, peaceful reign,” but the feudal lord Inoue Masaharu was 正春 (“righteous springtime”); another lord, Yonekura Masaharu, was 昌晴 (“prosperous clarity”); the video game composer Iwata Masaharu is 匡治 (“correct, peaceful reign”), and there are many more variations besides.
So how do Japanese people explain how to write their names over the phone? Where an English speaker might say, “M for Mike, A for alpha …” a Japanese speaker might say, “It's the first kanji in ‘gachi’ (雅楽, ‘good taste’), then the first in ‘chiryō’ (治療, ‘therapy’). If, like Mr Iwata, they have a kanji in their name that only appears in obscure words (like 匡救, kyōkyū, “deliverance from sin”), they might say: “It's the radical for ‘box’ with the kanji for “king” written inside.”
This process can be far from straightforward, especially since some names include old-fashioned or non-standard kanji forms. There are lengthy guides (like this one) advising people on both how to explain their kanji clearly and how to ask for clarification.
Spelling names would be much easier if Japanese were written with kana alone, but proposals to switch to this system have never gained support. For many Japanese people, the kanji in a name aren't just a way of conveying sound. They tell a story and form part of an identity.
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Learning to write a kanji, like learning to spell a word written with letters or kana, can have a rote element. The strokes of each kanji must be written in a specific order, and you simply have to memorise this.
Yet the process of learning kanji feels very different, and not just because I'm doing it by choice as an adult. I've studied several languages for pleasure; all of them except Japanese were written solely with alphabets. I've never set myself a spelling test in Greek or Russian just for fun, but I often practice kanji for the sheer joy of it. I think it's because when I write kanji, I'm not just measuring myself against a standard. I'm bringing the character to life.
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With three different writing systems to choose from, Japanese people sometimes base their spelling on factors other than strict “correctness.” This can particularly be seen in the titles of Jpop songs. In Fukuyama Masaharu's song 無敵のキミ (Mutekino Kimi / Invincible You), the word “kimi” (you) is written with katakana, rather than the usual kanji 君. This gives the title a startling, fresh look, as well as a sharp appearance that matches the song.
By contrast, the title of 蛍 (Hotaru / Firefly) is written with a kanji even though the word is far more commonly spelled out with hiragana (ほたる).
To me, this emphasises the individuality of the metaphorical firefly being sung to (the one the singer thanks for finding him, and whose small light he feels can “burn away any tragedy”). A kanji means: You're more than an assembly of parts.