The
2015 zonal finals in the annual spelling competition here were completed
yesterday.
Prior to proceedings the contestants, ten to twelve year old Primary students, watched a video tribute to Mr. LKY and observed a minute's silence.
In the Northern Zone six cycles were required to separate the final pair of youngsters with words such as procurante and excrescence. In the end the word that decided the winner was amaranthine.
Small wonder "the audience at all four zones gasped in amazement and clapped loudly when pupils correctly uttered the letters" of such words, the newspaper reported; other words included onomatopoeia and pecuniary.
113 pupils of that age vying yesterday from the island-wide pool of 1,654 original contestants.
Would there be anything comparable in any city in Britain, the U.S. or Canada? In Australia nothing of quite this kind known to this author. On the day of the founding PM's funeral today one was reminded of one of the stories repeated of the former Cambridge man. At a function of some kind in either London or at the British High Commission where the then PM Mr. LKY lambasted the decline of the English at some length and in some detail it seems — pre-Maggie Thatcher it must have been: the pair shared a great mutual admiration — in reply a respondent in the audience startled the Chinaman by suggesting there was no greater Englishman east of Suez than himself.
Prior to proceedings the contestants, ten to twelve year old Primary students, watched a video tribute to Mr. LKY and observed a minute's silence.
In the Northern Zone six cycles were required to separate the final pair of youngsters with words such as procurante and excrescence. In the end the word that decided the winner was amaranthine.
Small wonder "the audience at all four zones gasped in amazement and clapped loudly when pupils correctly uttered the letters" of such words, the newspaper reported; other words included onomatopoeia and pecuniary.
113 pupils of that age vying yesterday from the island-wide pool of 1,654 original contestants.
Would there be anything comparable in any city in Britain, the U.S. or Canada? In Australia nothing of quite this kind known to this author. On the day of the founding PM's funeral today one was reminded of one of the stories repeated of the former Cambridge man. At a function of some kind in either London or at the British High Commission where the then PM Mr. LKY lambasted the decline of the English at some length and in some detail it seems — pre-Maggie Thatcher it must have been: the pair shared a great mutual admiration — in reply a respondent in the audience startled the Chinaman by suggesting there was no greater Englishman east of Suez than himself.
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