Arvind Mahankali Indian
American wins National Spelling Bee
13-year-old indian American Arvind Mahankali from Bayside
Hills, New York, correctly spelled 'knaidel,' the word for a small mass of
leavened dough, to win the 86th Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday
night. The bee tested brain power, composure and, for the first time, knowledge
of vocabulary.
Arvind finished in third place in both 2011 and 2012, and
both times, he was eliminated on German-derived words. This time, he got one
German word in the finals, and the winning word was from German-derived
Yiddish, eliciting groans and laughter from the crowd. He spelled both with
ease.
Arvind outlasted 11 other finalists, all but one of whom had
been to the National Spelling Bee before, in nearly 2 hours of tense, grueling
competition that was televised nationally. In one round, all nine participants
spelled their words correctly.
Arvind's family is originally from Hyderabad in southern
India, and relatives who live there were watching live on television.
"At home, my dad used to chant Telegu poems from
forward to backward and backward to forward, that kind of thing," said
Arvind's father, Srinivas. "So language affinity, we value language a lot.
And I love language, I love English."
Pranav Sivakumar, who like Arvind rarely appeared flustered
onstage, finished second. The 13-year-old from Tower Lakes, Ill., was tripped
up by "cyanophycean," a word for a blue-green alga. Sriram Hathwar,
13, of Painted Post, N.Y., finished third, and Amber Born, 14, of Marblehead,
Mass., was fourth.
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