You may recall last week when Arvind V. Mahankali won the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word “knaidel.” What you may not know is that some are now saying that he didn’t spell the word correctly at all.
The Atlantic Wire reports that Yiddish linguists say that “knaidel,” which finds its origins in the dialect, is actually spelled “kneydl.” Of course, the spelling offered up by the Yiddish experts is just one of many spellings for the word that has taken on many forms over the years.
As for the spelling bee staff, they say that Mahankali correctly spelled the word as it appears in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. By all accounts, he’s still the champion.
Mahankali became somewhat of an Internet sensation last week when his winning the spelling bee took off on YouTube and other social sharing sites. His celebration, in particular, was singled out for being very appropriate for a boy his age.
Oh, and if you were wondering, Mahankali will not be coming back for a repeat performance next year. He says that he’s done with spelling bees and now wants to focus his efforts on physics.