And you think *you* can spell...

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I'm sort of the family dictionary. My wife and daughter are always asking me how to spell this word or that or the definition of a particular word. I consider myself somewhat average actually, and find myself looking up the spelling of words all the time. This story from CNN should humble almost all of us:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/05/30/spelling.bee.ap/index.html

 

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Wow, that's tough, and not only for a 13 year old.

 

I have to ask myself what kind of people actually make these words up to start with.

 

Probably historical, borrowed from other languages and so on. I speak 6 languages but understand a lot more just because of this fact. My knowledge of French helps me to figure out the meaning of a Spanish or Italian word. My Polish and Russian help me with other Slavic languages as Czech. My Dutch, English and German help me with Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. My Japanese does not help me that much, nor does my Gaelic. As a matter of fact I am still triing to master the latter two.
What I am triing to say is, the more languages you know, the more 'links' you see between words and expressions.