![\"Pronouncer](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AP18150735388832.jpg?w=2478\")
AP PHOTO\/CAROLYN KASTER<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n
At the Greek Orthodox church in Springfield, Sietsema\u2019s facility for languages proved useful when he served as a volunteer chanter, helping the priest lead services in Greek. \u201cI do a good job with the liturgical Greek because I have the phonological knowledge to know how to make my mouth do the things that it needs to do to sound like authentic Greek speech as opposed to an American just rattling off Greek letters,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He began taking evening classes in Byzantine chant, and before long the bishop was encouraging him to attend seminary. Merriam-Webster allowed him to work four 10-hour days so he could commute to Brookline to study at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. And after four years, he earned a master of divinity degree.<\/p>\n
Sietsema fully intended to go back to being a lexicographer, perhaps eventually getting ordained so he could serve as a substitute priest on weekends. But he\u2019d made what he jokingly calls \u201ca terrible mistake\u201d at the seminary: He\u2019d embraced his studies so enthusiastically that he became the valedictorian and had to give the commencement speech. The archbishop of America\u2014the head of the Greek Orthodox church in the US\u2014came up from New York to attend the ceremony, and he happened to be in need of a deacon who could also serve as a speechwriter. \u201cA few weeks later, I got a call from the archdiocese saying \u2018We want you to be ordained, and we want you to come to New York, and we want you to write for the archbishop,\u2019\u201d Sietsema recalls.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In short order, he and his wife moved to the Upper East Side of Manhattan so he could begin his new post as Father Mark (he used his middle name because Orthodox priests must be ordained with a saint\u2019s name, and there are no Orthodox Saint Brians). As deacon to the archbishop and then to his successor, he wrote their speeches and encyclicals on top of many other duties\u2014including chauffeuring them through New York City traffic\u2014and traveled with them around the country and to Greece, meeting President Clinton, ambassadors, members of Congress, Elie Wiesel, and South Africa\u2019s Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu along the way. But after two years, as the father of a newborn, he was eager to move on from a job that required putting in as many as 14 hours six or seven days a week. So in 2000, he returned to Michigan to become pastor of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Lansing.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cThe World Series can be a four-game sweep and the Super Bowl can be a blowout, but the National Spelling Bee always comes down to one last word.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Not long after settling into parish life, Sietsema got an unexpected call from the Scripps Spelling Bee. His wife had served on the event\u2019s word panel from 1997 to 2000, and he had traveled with her to one of the members\u2019 off-site gatherings in 1998. He\u2019d tagged along to dinner one night, and they were pleased to meet the person who was responsible for pronunciations in the bee\u2019s official dictionary. But now, just a few weeks before the 2003 event, there was a crisis: The longtime pronouncer had suddenly died. The veteran associate pronouncer would step into his role and take on the job of giving spellers their words, but a new associate pronouncer would be needed to answer spellers\u2019 questions about word roots, monitor pronunciations, and be prepared to serve as the pronouncer if needed. Could he do it? Honored to be asked, Sietsema got the okay from his bishop and said yes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Little did he know it would become a permanent gig. After 15 years of answering root-word queries, when the bee expanded in 2018 he began serving as a pronouncer for some of the earlier rounds as well\u2014though never for the finals. Now he\u2019s the head of a team of associate pronouncers. \u201cIt\u2019s just wonderful to see these young people blossom right in front of you, asking their questions and analyzing the word on the spot and figuring out how it all goes together,\u201d he says. He dismisses the idea that the kids have photographic memories, saying they\u2019re \u201creally just good little word detectives.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a member of the bee\u2019s word panel, Sietsema attends multiple daylong meetings to create and fine-tune each year\u2019s list by mining the 500,000 or so words in Merriam-Webster\u2019s unabridged dictionary. \u201cFor an introductory round, you want something that\u2019s an interesting word, a useful word, but something that\u2019s gettable,\u201d he says. \u201cFor the later rounds, you really want to find something that\u2019s going to challenge the speller. And it\u2019s nice to have a word that\u2019s analyzable.\u201d \u201cRooty\u201d words\u2014those with obvious roots\u2014are ideal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The advent of unabridged online dictionaries has streamlined how students prepare for the bee, which once required wading through the dictionary manually to compile word lists. Today, it\u2019s easy to generate lists of words derived from a particular language to study their roots, for example. Meanwhile, the competition has become increasingly fierce, and once-verboten terms like geographical names are considered fair game. For some of the words in the hardest rounds, \u201cit looks like you\u2019re just taking a spoonful of alphabet soup,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s for the spellers who really, really are committed to learning just about every word they can in the dictionary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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