appoggiatura

that is the final word in this year's speeling bee competition covered live by the dork network espn (really now!). i am a big fan of spelling bee competitions and i was surprised to find out a couple of years ago that espn indeed covers the national spelling bee contest.

this is the reason why i bought the spellbound dvd, a nicely-done documentary that followed the lives of former contestants who were competing in the 1999 spelling bee championship. the film was nominated for best documentary in the 2003 oscar's.

anyway, an indian-american kid eight-grader won this year's contest. he won $30,000 in cash, scholarship and books. not bad.

there's a reason why i am into spelling bee stuff. ahem. when i was a kid, i used to join similar competitions and i always represented my school in the district, then in the zonals, then in the division, then in the regionals. i never made it to the nationals though. sayang.

i am a bitter loser and in one of those hotly-contested competitions, i felt so bad losing because i missed a very, very simple word. "the word," the pronunciation-defective host said, "is (and this is how she pronounced the word) va-yas. va-yas."

one f-in word and i missed being sent to the regionals that year.

i wrote. v-i-a-s. va-yas.

i dunno why some of my fellow competitors got it. she clearly mispronounced the word. but then, how could i protest when some participants got it right?

oh well. the word? it was bias. b-i-a-s. bias.


*Leaning note; grace note; note of embellishment usually one step above (sometimes, though seldom, it is one step below) the main note. Before an even or unaltered note, the appoggiatura generally receives its face value, that is one-half the value of the note that follows; before a dotted note it receives more than its face value, that is to say that it should be given two-thirds of the value of the following note. If the note is of the same pitch as the principal note of the appoggiatura, the grace note receives the entire value of its principal note, but is carried to the next note with strong portamento.