A pronunciation bee is like the inverse of a spelling bee. Instead of being spoken a word and asked to spell it, the contestants are given a string of letters and asked to pronounce it.

“Katie, your word is F-L-O-C-C-U-L-E-N-T.”

“F-L-O-C-C-U-L-E-N-T. Flock-ya-lint?”

“That is correct. Julius, your word is M-A-H-A-B-H-A-R-A-T-A.”

Perhaps the word may be projected onto a screen instead of spelled aloud. That may streamline the contest. Or it could be projected and read aloud, like quiz show questions. And perhaps you don’t need to spell the word before and after the pronunciation; maybe just pronouncing it is enough.

Other than that, usual spelling bee-style rules would apply. You could ask for part of speech, definition, language of origin, maybe its usage in a sentence. When it’s down to two pronouncers and the other pronouncer makes a mistake, you don’t win unless you pronounce the final word correctly.

As far as I know, no one has held a pronunciation bee. This may be an illusion due to the fact that querying Google with anything including the word pronunciation gives me a whole list of mediocre How-To-Pronounce-This-Word sites. No, Google, I don’t need to know how to pronounce bee. That’s not my question! Maybe that’s why I can’t find any information on pronunciation bees.

But there’s a deeper problem with the pragmatics of pronunciation bees. How can you judge when a contestant has pronounced the word correctly? What if they mumble it? What if they have a thick accent? Where do we draw the line? What happens with challenges like “Maybe you English pronounce babushka with stress on the second syllable, but in Russian we stress the first”? Invariably a dispute will arise where a contestant’s parent will accuse the judges of accent discrimination, and then nobody will want to have anything to do with pronunciation bees anymore.

Some words that would knock me out of a pronunciation bee:

Ascertain. To make sure. Stress on the third syllable. Rhymes with “pain” and not “curtain”.

Brooch. Like, an old-fashioned pin fastened to clothing. Apparently “broach”.

Cadre. Apparently “cad-ree”, not “cad-ray”.

Combatant. Someone in a fight. Stress on the second syllable. Not “competent” but with a B. Rhymes with “patent”.

Conspirator. Someone in a conspiracy. Apparently “con-SPIRIT-er”, stress on the second syllable. To make matters worse, respirator is stressed on the first.

Daiquiri, the drink. Apparently “dackery”. Rhymes with William Makepeace Thackeray.

Diaeresis. The umlaut-like diacritic on coöperate and reëlect. Doesn’t start out like “diarrhoea”. “Die heiresses” is more like it.

Lingerie. Undergarments. I asked two of my friends for this one. I said (and here’s where I’ll have to break out the IPA) /lɛ̃ʒ.ʁi/. Two syllables, with the nasalised ɛ̃ and the throaty French ʁ. But nope, they agreed it’s “lon-ja-RAY”. As if it were spelled langerée.

Prescient. Clairvoyant. “Preshy-ent”.

Puerile. Boorish. My mouth absolutely refuses to work with me on this word. “Pyoor-’ll”?