World's Hardest Spelling Bee... is a writing systems bee! But what even is writing?

In which I get animated about my writing bee gameshow dream, then handwrite examples from diverse scripts that challenge definitions of writing.

Links to those two creators with more to say about "check[ing] our educational priorities" ~

My sources for every claim, beat by beat, along with credits for images and sfx ~

~ Notes and Corrections ~
⚠️ Fast-spinning wheel with bright colors from 0:08-0:15, and 0:57-1:03, and 14:09-14:13 ⚠️

Greek Koinéization Attic/Ionic pairs: Ionian side should end not in -η but -α, as it still does in Demotic.

Art, animation, narration and music by me; everything else lives in the document above.

~ Briefly ~

I took a summertime break from animating "grammatical animals". Spent 230 hours wandering through writing systems instead.

So let's revisit my concept of a writing bee gameshow and the assumptions it makes about the comparative difficulty of writing systems. Contrast those assumptions with "marks on the page" definitions of writing, and use the writing bee to build a visual model of writing that incorporates roles, people, society. Through my calligraphy practice, reflect on the ways past readers and writers have shaped diverse scripts, and how their decisions challenge our definitions of writing. In particular, watch scripts of Central America break our definitions, with examples from my Maya and Nāhuatl handwriting practice. Finally, Ñuu dzaui codices from Mexico will ask us to rethink what writing even means... next time!

[AncientAmericas]

Well now that you've teased us with some Nahuatl writing, I can't wait for a future episode on the Nahuatl script! Great video!

[jcortese]

I still remember sharing an office during grad school with an Argentinian student who was gobsmacked to learn that Americans compete to spell words. We had started out talking about how insane English spelling was; she'd said that the language wasn't hard at all, but the spelling was nuts. I told her we know it's nuts, which is why we have school contests on spelling.

I still remember her facial expression. Her whole face was like: "You WHAT?"

"They're called spelling bees. Kids compete to spell words."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We KNOW our spelling is nuts."

[_au]

As a Filipino, I'm glad the Baybayin script is acknowledged in this video.

[singam]

Since you mentioned orthography games, here's a game from India. Called antakshari, you sing a verse of a song, and the next person has to sing a song whose base consonant matches the base consonant of the last syllable of your song. It gets really interesting when you remember that many Indians are multilingual, and even ones that aren't usually know songs from different languages, and that these different languages have different definitions of what counts as a phoneme vs an allophone of the same phoneme.

[ugojlachapelle]

French :
- Obviously, the infamous Dictée, where you are read a text that you must write down without spelling mistakes. The most famous one being the Dictée Paul Gérin-Lajoie.

Japanese:
- Karuta, where you point to cards showing things starting with a specific kana.
- Shiritori, where you say a word that starts with the kana which ended the previous one; you lose if your word ends with the kana ん.

[harrybrooks]

The polyglot community will be royally stumped

[vrixphillips]

"some adults can't let go of that word that got them knocked out"
darn tootin: 4th grade: s(c)keleton. 5th grade: ma(i)yonnaise.

[SAbbas]

8 years later, back to the spelling bee, how many things have changed since 2016? How many things and people have we lost? How have we changed as people? But nativlang has always been there.

[ValhallaToadplant]

I love how the script-writing has evolved - and is so clearly influenced by the poetry and logics of the languages you study. The way you play with English as you noodle over and express thoughts that are not baked into the language itself.... There's something really beautiful about that... And (I imagine) challenging

[NativLang]

This was my summer 🌞✒ More writing in the fall, then it's back to grammatical animals
- Spellers, do you remember "that word" you got out on?
- Non-spellers, what linguistic/graphemic games did you play?

[calebbrown]

Eight years

That’s the longest hiatus for one event

[yieldsfalsehood]

Can't get over the absolutely un-called-for poetic grace of these videos.

[Knuckles_la_Enchilada]

I should note that the XIUH "pun" can be semantically related, as the concepts of the turquoise color and time seem to be related

[fayd_away]

i know 20 writing systems, and all but the roman alphabet i learned from may-december 2023, and i’m still very interested in linguistics but stopped caused i had learned most common ones and a ton of lesser known ones as well. but literally just yesterday i randomly decided i wanted to learn another (gujarati) so it’s kind of perfect timing that one of my favourite linguistics youtubers posts a video about writing systems :)

[ARP_]

Is this a reference to the old video about Tibetan and Thai?

[leorospigg]

I got Tibetan flashbacks from that wheel

[mortimer]

As a longtime Filipino fan of yours, I honestly never expected you to mention Baybayin, but alas you surprise me yet again. I hope this means more light on the Philippines! I’m still dying to see a video on AA and Tagalog verbs

[agehchou]

I failed a linguistics project trying to teach myself Nahuatl (I also failed to learn really any Nahuatl) so I LOVE seeing it get the spotlight here.

I also once misspoke while spelling 'julienne' in the late rounds of a countywide spelling bee. I have never forgiven French culinary loanwords as a whole.

[pierreabbat]

There is a Spanish spelling bee, starting from simple words like "madre" and proceeding to words like "aizoaceo" (adjective describing a certain plant family). There are homophones written differently, like "encima" (on top) and "enzima" (enzyme; "zi" and "ze" are rare in Spanish), and "hizo" (did) and "izo" (I raise something by pulling a cord).
How about a spelling ant?

[tazzyhyena]

12:02 This reminds me of a writing system I imagined where a scribe weaved meaning into cloth, where the colour, texture, pattern, etc of the weft changed the phoneme being recorded, creating elaborate tapestries and abstract pieces of art that could record epics, edicts, hopes, and dreams.