Indian-origin boy, Dev Shah is US National Spelling Bee champion
Dev correctly spelled the word, “psammophile”, meaning an organism that prospers in sand, in the 15 round of the competition.
An Indian-American boy, 14-year-old Karthik Nemmani, won the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee 31 May. He became the 14th champion from the community in 11 consecutive years, after he correctly spelt “koinonia” in the final round.
The champion took home 40,000 USD and a trophy from Scripps Bee, which is sponsored by the EW Scripps media group, in addition to a $2,500 cash prize from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publisher and other prizes.
An eighth-grader from McKinney, Texas, Karthik was in a nail-biting competition against another Indian-American Naysa Modi who misspelled “Bewusstseinslage” and paved way for Karthik’s victory.
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After winning the trophy, Karthik admitted the difficulty of the word that tripped Naysa and said, “She deserves the trophy just as much if not more than I did.”
The third to sixth spots were claimed by Abhijay Kodali, Jashun Paluru, Navneeth Murali and Sravanth Malla respectively.
Karthik and Naysa were the last two standing of the initial 516 spellers.
“I had confidence, but I didn’t think it would really happen,” said Karthik, adding that he was sure about correctly spelling the word, which means Christian fellowship or communion, as soon as he heard it. He called his victory a dream come true.
Apart from the cash prize, Karthik has won trips to New York and Hollywood as part of a media tour, and a pizza party for their school, the Washington Post reported.
In the 93-year history of the competition, it was for the first time 516 contestants participated.
Other than spending his time on studies, Karthik likes to play tennis and watch the Chicago Bulls and the Denver Broncos.
Indian-origin children have won the Spelling Bee championship for 11 continuous years since Sameer Mishra won in 2008. In total, 18 Indian-American children have won the championship so far.
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